Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent

by Mark Abernethy

  He fl ipped on, a typical Indonesian journal in that it was written in both Bahasa and English. He was about to chuck it aside when something caught his eye, and he fl ipped back. There was a half-page display advertisement in black and white. Mostly in English, the banner read SURABAYA PORT STORAGE, followed by the acronym SPS. The artwork showed a group of gabled dock warehouses and a cartoon man in overalls holding a key. They were short-and medium-term freight transit facilities, self-service and non-bonded.

  Down the side of the ad was a list of Surabaya Port Storage’s other sites. Mac felt his pulse lifting. Looking around the room out of habit, he ran his fi nger down the list and found it two from the bottom: Makassar Port Storage (MPS).

  Mac got into character, convinced himself that the number on the MPS key was 46 and fed some change into the roadhouse TI phone.

  Rang the direct number on the magazine ad. It answered in three. Mac said, ‘G’day, that Gerry?’

  There was a confused sound at the other end, whispering, someone who didn’t have English handing over to someone who did.

  A new male voice, slightly younger, came on the line. Said, ‘Hello?’, like he was asking a question.

  ‘Yeah, sport, Collier here. Brandon Collier from Orion.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Brandon.’

  ‘Mate, having one of those days - had a bunch of stuff in number forty-six. But I’ve just got the consignment and it’s all linen, mate.

  Those useless bastards got me the wrong goods.’

  Silence.

  ‘So I’m trying to work out what’s been left in forty-six, if what I’ve got is the frigging linen consignment. With me, sport?’

  ‘I not know, Mr Brandon.’

  ‘Can’t you just have a look for me, champ? I don’t want to send someone all the way to Makassar just to look in the damned shed.

  With me, sport?’

  ‘Can’t look, Mr Brandon. No rule.’

  Mac wanted to keep the bloke talking in the hope he’d just go and have a peek, see what was in the joint. But there was something else there - fear. They probably had his family or had threatened to do something similar to what they did with Minky if any Anglos or POLRI turned up for a butcher’s. Mac decided not to push it. He’d just have to look for himself.

  Mac made it into Jakkers in one go, without getting lost. The outer and inner freeway rings of Jakarta were notoriously confusing, especially where they interchanged. Even the locals who drove them every day found them a nightmare. The worst was a three-level interchange which saw extra fl yovers being added every ten years to alleviate the confusion that had been created previously with the one below. A total Barry Crocker.

  It was early evening when he drove through the leafy affl uence of south Jakarta. The Australian Embassy was on one of the grandest boulevards, called Rasuna Said. Mac skirted it, then made for a commercial area. He pulled into the off-street car park of a large private mail centre. It was fl uorescently lit inside. Walking in, Mac made for the service counter. A middle-aged Javanese face stared back blankly.

  ‘Georgie, it’s me, Richard.’

  Georgie’s face sprang to life. Big smile. ‘Mr Richard - I did not know it was you.’

  ‘Like the hair, mate?’ he said, pulling the black hair off his face and smiling.

  Mac found that joking about sudden changes of appearance was better than trying to fool people with it - especially people you knew, and wanted to use.

  ‘Mate, I left my key at home,’ said Mac, slapping at his pockets.

  ‘How’re the kids by the way?’

  ‘Teenagers! Mate! Forget it!’

  Georgie waved his hand dismissively and walked behind the bank of mail boxes. He kept talking. ‘I say to my son yesterday, “How come you turn fi fteen and you suddenly the genius? You’re having the lend.” ‘

  Mac loved it when Indons went all Strine on him. That was Indon—

  Aussie diplomacy, right there.

  Mac was laughing when Georgie got back in front of him. ‘Mate -

  he knows it all. Just ask him!’

  ‘It true,’ said Georgie with the Javanese wide-eyes. ‘It true!’

  Georgie put down some letters, and the package Mac had parcelled up the night before. Consular mail sure beat the public version. Georgie put it all in a white plastic shopping bag with the mail centre’s logo on it.

  There was a stack of TI phone cards on a rack behind Georgie.

  Mac asked for a 10,000 rupiah version, paid in cash and left.

  He opened the package in the Civic. Everything was there. He put the Heckler in the centre console and unfolded the blue ovies, pray-ing he hadn’t chucked the key in some fi t of effi ciency. Shaking the ovies, out came the cheapo pre-paid phone he’d bought in Makassar and the black diamond MPS key ring followed it.

  He was about to start the Civic, but saw a TI phone booth beside the mail centre and decided to save the pre-paid phone for the more important calls.

  Secretaries put him through to PAs, and fi nally Diane came on the line, ‘Richard! How are you, darling?’

  Mac could have been a pool of melted heart, right there on the pavement. He choked a little. ‘Yeah, no worries.’

  She chuckled, she pouted. She was making up with him and Mac was dissolving into his shoes. Total squirrel-grip.

  He apologised for doing a runner in the restaurant and Diane apologised for dumping him by voicemail. They had a laugh. Diane said they should apologise a bit more personally over a few chardies.

  Mac said how was tonight? Diane didn’t hear him right. So Mac lied that he was in Utara - the north of the city. Diane was speechless for a few seconds.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Something caught in my throat,’ she said, then gathered herself.

  ‘So where are you staying?’

  ‘Well, I was going to check into the Sultan. I’ve just got into town.’

  ‘Why not stay down here?’

  ‘Where - at the embassy?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Sure. I’m in one of the cottages.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘What’s the secret handshake?’

  Diane gave him the drum. Said she’d have his name at the gate.

  ‘See you at nine, darling.’

  Mac signed off, breathed out. There was at least one game that he was playing in.

  He pushed in the TI card and dialled again. Jenny Toohey came on the line. ‘Can we talk?’ he asked.

  She said sure, she was going to be home at seven.

  He was about to make another call, but hesitated. The last few days had seen him surviving more attempts on his life than he was happy with. He wondered about tempting fate. Wondered who really gave a shit about Garrison and his snatch on Judith Hannah. Maybe Garvs was right. Perhaps he should walk away and leave the whole wash-up to the politicians.

  He looked into the middle distance. Tapped himself on the head with the blue plastic receiver. Tried to make himself see it the cynical way. Tried for once in his life to think like an offi ce guy. But he couldn’t make it come. He looked up at the sky, said, ‘ Faaarrrk!’

  Then he called Lion Air, and booked the morning fl ight to Makassar.

  CHAPTER 18

  Mac drove north, dropped the Civic at Avis’s downtown depot and took out the plastic mail centre bag with the ovies. He put the hip rig on, letting his white shirt out a little to cover the weapon. Putting the cheapo phone in his pocket he grabbed a cab to the fi nance district.

  Got out. Walked both sides of the street. Looked for eyes, swapped taxis and made for the trendy port area of Jakarta.

  Jenny had lived on and off in the Aussie residential compound.

  But a couple of years ago she’d moved to a private residence. It kept her from having to reject advances from workmates but also increased her risk of dying from misadventure.

  Mac had the taxi drop him three blocks from Jenny’s address.

  He walked one side of the street, then the other, counter-surveillin
g, looking for eyes. Satisfi ed, he walked up a frangipani-lined path to a modern block of apartments in a fi ve-storey building.

  He smelled cayenne pepper and coriander - dinner time in Jakkers. Walking up the stairs to the second level, he rang the bell. The door opened slightly and Jenny Toohey’s pretty face peeked out. She smiled, opened the door, looked over both his shoulders. Mac stepped in, hugged her. She hugged him back, but with one arm - the other held a Glock 9 mm pointed at the fl oor. They kicked at the door at the same time. It slammed.

  Jenny stood back, fl ashed a smile. She was looking good - tall, athletic, fresh-faced, dark hair back in a ponytail. She fi lled out a pair of Levis and a T-shirt like God had poured her in. Mac would have done the business if he didn’t have his mind on another woman.

  ‘Ooh, aah - the hair. Decided being brunette makes you sexier and smarter, huh?’ she said, squeezing his bicep playfully.

  ”Zit going?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Not bad for an old girl.’

  ‘Thirty-fi ve’s not old,’ he smiled. ‘It’s fucking ancient.’

  She laughed in mock rage. ‘Need a beer? I got some cold ones.’

  ‘Sure, Jen.’

  ‘So,’ she pointed at his crook right wrist. ‘You got a girlfriend for that?’

  Mac slapped her arse with his good hand. What was it with Australian humour and the subject of self-service?

  They walked into the kitchen-breakfast area. It was clean, nice, but not a home.

  She cracked two VBs, handed one over. They clinked bottles. Drank.

  ‘Aah,’ said Mac, looking at the stubbie like he was appraising a fi ne wine. ‘Nothing quite like the taste of Mexican bat piss.’

  Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘Queenslanders! The day you lot can explain the appeal of rum, then you can slag off our beer.’

  ‘Simple, mate,’ said Mac. ‘Makes everyone look the goods, and we need all the help we can get.’

  Mac had a strange bond with Jen. They’d met six years before at a Boxing Day embassy barbecue in Manila. The Ashes was on the telly and a bunch of Aussie, Kiwi and Pommie diplomats, law enforcement and intel types were sitting around in the residential compound getting completely shit-faced on Aussie booze.

  Mac was introduced to Jenny via a Pommie bloke who was trying to crack on to her. Jenny was the going-somewhere golden girl of the Australian Federal Police. She was all ironed-out and buttoned-down.

  Beautiful, and a former university basketball star.

  But an ice queen.

  The Pom spoke down to him, with a plum stuffed somewhere.

  He wore a tie on Boxing Day - a wanker.

  Mac and Jenny had done the polite Aussie thing, smiled and nodded, tried to make the best of it. Then the Pom told the Aussies how ‘privileged one felt to be part of the world’s oldest diplomatic legation’. Mac had told the nonplussed Pom, ‘Mate, you’d wanna get your hand off it at some point, wouldn’t you?’

  Jenny had ejected her mouthful of chardonnay through her nostrils. It took her fi ve minutes to compose herself.

  The ice queen had a sense of humour.

  Soon after they became on-and-off lovers - drank a bit, laughed a lot and joined forces on their loneliness. They liked each other’s company.

  She cried after sex.

  Jenny had gone into the Feds straight out of uni. After doing the usual ambitious-girl rotations she’d ended up working narcotics details out of Darwin, Perth and Brisbane. She was going places.

  Groomed for management and the SES structure of the Australian Public Service. A place where you fl ew business class, stayed at the Marriott and no one told you in advance what your expenses claim was going to be.

  Jenny was twenty-six when her life changed. During an ongoing investigation into a Vietnamese heroin importation ring the call had come through once again from Australian Customs in Vietnam. A husband, wife and kids were on the same route out of Saigon into Brisbane via Singers. All over again. The personnel changed regularly, but they were always a family unit and the intelligence placed them with the same drug gang.

  Jenny was in the Feds’ tail car, riding passenger and working the radio. She told the lead car where to go and let the backup car know where they might have to cut in. It was late January, the stinking Brisbane heat making a mockery of the Falcon’s air-con.

  Everyone was over it. They’d been tailing this mob and others from the same syndicate for almost two years and the heroin was still hitting the streets. The one bust they’d pulled seven months before was a roadside swoop in Logan City as the suspects had driven south to their Southport unit. It yielded nothing, except the gang complained about the racist treatment given that the mother had a young baby with her at the time.

  The complaint stuck. Offi cial reprimand. The whole suits versus cops bit.

  On the day her world changed, Jenny’s mind was elsewhere. Six days earlier she’d had a termination at the behest of her fi ance - an ambitious lawyer who wanted ‘a life’. She’d wanted the baby.

  Jenny was still bleeding and eating Nurofens, pale as death, as she tailed the Vietnamese family south-bound out of Brisbane. Suddenly, she’d had a fl ash. It went like this: ‘The baby!’ It was like she was sleepwalking.

  She turned to her superior, a guy called Steve Hornby who, in spite of his clumsy attempts at charm, was a good operator with the kind of arrest and conviction record that cops love.

  ‘Steve - the baby. The fucking baby!’ Jenny screeched.

  Hornby had recoiled. ‘What?’

  ‘Steve listen to me - pull them over. Do it!’

  ‘Fuck that for a game of soldiers,’ Hornby had replied, his left eyelid twitching, nervous about the vibe and uncomfortable with angry women.

  Jenny reached forward for the lights and siren switch.

  ‘Don’t you fucking do that, Toohey. That’s an order.’

  Jenny had never used her looks with her male colleagues - she didn’t want the reputation. But she leaned over, pushed her breasts onto his arm, slid her hand up Steve Hornby’s thigh.

  ‘Steve, it’s the baby. Trust me.’

  She sounded crazy and far away, even to her own ears.

  Steve broke a forehead sweat, his eyelid going crazy. ‘There goes my super.’

  Jenny hit the lights and they swooped on the Vietnamese.

  Which was how Jenny Toohey came to be standing on the side of the M1 at Rochedale in the early afternoon heat, holding the cadaver of a baby that was stuffed with the highest-grade Laotian heroin.

  Jenny’s mouth open, but no scream, looking down on the baby’s dead eyes staring out of heavy make-up.

  Packets of brown heroin fell out of the baby’s hollowed-out back as Jenny unwound the swaddling.

  Steve Hornby on his knees vomiting in the grass, begging for mercy. Please God, no!

  Feds from the lead car chased the ‘mother’ and ‘father’ down the nature strip, the mother’s right sandal fl ying off as she veered towards a wire fence.

  Panicked, out-of-breath yells came over the radio system.

  Jenny Toohey made no sound, heard only the roar of emptiness in her ears.

  She took stress leave and dumped the fi ance. She ducked counsell-ing, didn’t cry. She retrained, redeployed as AFP intelli gence liaison in an area that hooked from Saigon to Jakarta and up to Manila. Mac happened to know she was very good at what she did, which was busting the slave rackets - what they called transnational sexual servitude.

  Mac suspected she was in love with him, but she didn’t say it.

  She let him come and go. Mostly he went. She didn’t ask him about Southern Scholastic, she didn’t seem to need the details of what he did. In Mac’s experience, this was an almost super-human effort for a female cop.

  In return, he ignored the salt-crust she left on his chest when he slept over.

  She had only one stipulation: ‘I don’t cry, understand?’

  Mac said, ‘Good as gold.’

  They sat on her dark green canvas
sofa, her giving him the look. Like she knew something was up.

  ‘Jen, it’s over - I’m out.’

  ‘What? The ASIS thing?’

  ‘Book company, yeah,’ he said, winking.

  They smiled at each other.

  ‘When?’ asked Jenny.

  ‘My offi cial last day is January thirty.’

  Jen narrowed her eyes, thoughtful.

  ‘But there’s one last thing I have to do,’ said Mac. ‘And they don’t want me doing it.’

  Jen shifted forward on the sofa, looked at him with big dark eyes and said, ‘I know.’

  Mac cocked an eye.

  ‘That bloke - what’s his name? - Matthew, sidled up to me today.

  Asked me if I was in contact with you. Said something addressed for you had turned up in his pigeon hole, you know, and it was the kind of thing he had to give to you personally.’ She was being facetious, had that same cop disrespect for casual deception that his father had.

  They laughed. Sometimes spooks made it way too complicated.

  ‘And you told him?’

  ‘I said, “Matthew, wherever McQueen is hiding I’m sure it’s not down the front of my blouse.” ‘

  Mac laughed. Jenny could do that to him. Take all the stress and chuck it out the window.

  ‘Holy shit! You’re a piece of work, you are.’

  ‘Me?! It’s that bloke who’s the boob-talker - ask any of the girls.’

  Mac ran the options. Either she was part of the program and was carrying a wire, or she had dismissed Matt cold. The third option was that Matt had heard some talk round the traps and had Jenny’s apartment under surveillance. Mac would have done it.

  ‘Any tails?’

  She shook her head.

  Mac trusted Jen. She was highly tail-sensitive. A foreign female cop, living alone in Jakarta, spending her life tracking the kind of crime gangs that would steal children and sell them to paedophile brothels. If Jenny said there was no tail, there was no tail.