Authors: Mark Abernethy
‘Shit,’ he said, sitting and rubbing a hand up over his face and hair. ‘That was a microphone? They were listening to everything Lance was saying?’
‘Within range, yeah,’ said Mac.
‘So they heard where the memory card was and beat us to it?’
‘Sure,’ said Mac. ‘That’s how it goes in this game.’
‘But how did they get close enough to plant this thing on him?’ asked Urquhart.
‘Pretty girl, alone at a bar, asks a bloke to talk about himself,’ said Mac with a wry smile. ‘If you think it’s too good to be true, you’re probably right.’
Chapter 30
Lying on his back, Mac squirted saline into each eyeball, blinking it out again. As his eyes slowly cleaned themselves, he tried to work out what parts of this gig to lie about and what to come clean on.
Lance and Urquhart had obviously tailed him after the Singapore fiasco and it would have been within Urquhart’s power in Australian intelligence to have Mac assigned to the Jim Quirk tail. Mac was inclined to believe Urquhart: he’d genuinely wanted Mac to help him weed out the potential traitor who set up Ray Hu. And Mac had genuinely turned him down, at which point Urquhart opted for having Mac assigned to Saigon.
But the routine tail-and-report of Quirk had turned nasty and suddenly Lance was in a van with Mac, seeing the memory card. Lance must have felt the ends coming together quite easily. But then Boo Bray was run over and before Lance could double back to the Cambodiana and grab the memory card, the Israelis had intercepted Lance’s ill-advised call and grabbed it, leaving Lance and Urquhart looking like a couple of dilettantes.
Mac could only surmise what was on that card. What worried him was a series of violent attacks from the Israelis, culminat- ing in a light-bulb bomb at the Cambodiana; that is, a light bulb filled with a fuel-oil accelerant such as ammonia nitrate and a small flash-detonator in place of the filament. You didn’t need a huge amount of explosive in a small area like a bathroom – there was nowhere for the blast to go except out the door, where the victim should be standing at the light switch.
Someone from Israeli intelligence would know how to make such a bomb. One of the best technical rotations Mac had ever done was with the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal spy agency. Most field operators in the Shin Bet became proficient in making IEDs, so they knew a bomb factory when they saw one, and in many cases could smell a bomb-maker if they were standing beside him.
What Mac didn’t understand was how Ray Hu came into it.
For now, Mac needed to get out of the safe house before Urquhart or Lance came back with questions about the shootout at the docks the night before. Mac had his own questions about that incident and he had two main priorities that had nothing to do with the memory card: he wanted to find Tranh, and to do that he might need Sam’s help. And then he had some payback planned for that Israeli hit man with the mad eyes.
Mac had one thing going for him: Lance had failed to find Mac’s backpack or the van. Mac reckoned the backpacks and cell phone tracker were safe in the room registered under the name of Sam Chan until Phnom Penh police reported to the Australian Embassy that they’d found the ‘lost’ van. Mac had given his vehicle rego as the Mazda’s. The van wouldn’t be found immediately, but before it was Mac needed to get out of the house.
His black baseball cap was hooked over the back of the chair near the door, and he had an idea.
Eighteen minutes later the deadlock rattled and Marlon brought Mac’s lunch into the room, dragged the stool over with his foot and put down the sandwich and a can of Tiger.
‘I’m liking your taste in food, Marlon,’ said Mac, eyeing the sandwich. ‘Ham, cheese and tomato – perfect with a cold beer.’
Smiling, Marlon turned to go. ‘By the way, I was at the embassy this morning and I bumped into Alex Beech.’
‘How’s Sandy?’ said Mac.
Marlon’s face burst into a big, toothy smile. ‘Sandy
Beech
– you cheeky bugger.’
‘He loves it,’ said Mac. ‘Try calling him “Bondi” and watch him come alive. What’s he in town for?’
‘Didn’t say,’ said Marlon, taking a seat on the chair and looking mischievous. ‘But I got some info on you.’
‘From Sandy?’
‘Yeah. I asked him why someone from the military would claim to have been a truck driver when they obviously weren’t.’
‘And he laughed and said the military runs on logistics,’ said Mac.
‘How’d you know that?’ said Marlon.
‘Because Sandy shovelled chow – an army marches on its stomach.’
Marlon gave Mac a suspicious look; he’d been a police detective in Brisbane before joining I-team five years earlier and still liked to get to the bottom of people. ‘Well, that’s as clear as mud.’
‘Hey, Marlon,’ said Mac, taking a swig of the beer as he swallowed his first bite of the sandwich. ‘My eyes are still hurting – can you chuck me that hat to keep the glare off my eyeballs?’
‘Sure.’ Marlon spun the cap through the air onto Mac’s lap.
‘So was Sandy with anyone?’ said Mac, sure that Beech’s appearance was not coincidental.
‘He was alone.’
‘Who was he meeting with?’ said Mac, smiling.
‘What you really want to know is if he was asking after you, right, McQueen?’
‘The thought did occur.’
‘He didn’t, but I wouldn’t tell him anything – I’m employed by DFAT, not Defence.’
Mac pushed. ‘How was he dressed?’
‘Relax, cuz,’ said Marlon, standing and stretching. ‘Your best bet is to tell this Lance fool what he wants to hear so we can all move on. I was due in Honkers yesterday.’
Gnawing at the right side of the cap where the peak met the cap proper, Mac tore a hole in the canvas and exposed the thin steel rim that ran in a semicircle around the edge of the peak.
He drew out the steel rim until he held a flat wire of the type commonly associated with a woman’s bra. The wire slipped easily into the keyhole of the cuffs and Mac twisted and needled at the tumbler until he felt it turn. Within ten seconds his wrist was free.
Standing, Mac cat-walked to the door and listened to Lance and Urquhart arguing somewhere in the house. They were classic intelligence dabblers: smart enough to ensure that people got hurt, but not experienced enough to fix their mistakes. If they followed the script used by most of Canberra’s whiteboard warriors, they were currently tearing each other apart over the memory card, but by the time they got off the flight into Sydney they’d have shifted culpability onto Mac or maybe even Boo Bray, who had the added attraction of being unable to speak up in his own defence.
Lance and Urquhart would be blameless. Not only would they write the report, but they would be protected by the truism that he who stands closest to the Prime Minister is never hit by the shit.
Moving to the window, Mac checked the latches: they were the old-fashioned horizontal-twist type, but with locked bolts in the sashes.
Slipping the flat wire from the cap into the first bolt lock, Mac worked at it until he felt the wire twisting and losing shape. He gave up on that one and moved to the second, where the wire went in more readily. He had it unlocked in six seconds.
Lifting the window, Mac looked into the garden. He was on the first floor, with a fifteen-foot drop to the vegetable patch. Grabbing his sandals, he walked back to the window and was preparing to throw his leg over when the door opened. Turning, he saw Marlon at the same time Marlon saw him and they locked eyes for a split second, in an exchange of men asking one another,
Are we really going to do this?
With a stamp kick at Marlon’s left kneecap, Mac threw a swinging elbow at the big man’s right temple.
Leaning back slightly, Marlon took the blow on his nose and blood spurted across the white door like a Pro Hart stroke. Whipping a right-hand uppercut at that big jaw, Mac instead hit Marlon’s thick left forearm coming down with a strong block that threw Mac off balance.
Marlon was about a hundred and fifteen to Mac’s hundred and five, but his right hand leapt out like a cobra at Mac’s throat, wrapping almost totally around his neck. Mac felt his spine straighten and his feet almost leave the ground as Marlon applied the power with that enormous arm, making Mac feel like a passenger.
Twisting his face away from Marlon’s, Mac threw a finger strike at his assailant’s eyes. Marlon slackened his grip and smashed the arm off his throat with a right-arm block and lashed a fast low–high left hook combination to Marlon’s kidney and then his jaw, sending the bigger man lurching back and sideways into the door.
‘Marlon, are you okay?’ Urquhart called from downstairs as the door almost came off its hinges.
Marlon’s eyes rolled back and he attempted a left-hand punch which glanced across Mac’s right cheekbone. Keeping his eyes locked on Marlon’s, Mac dropped to his knee and threw a fast groin punch straight into the Samoan’s pubic bone.
Air expelled in a whoosh from the bigger man’s lungs and Mac was on him as he collapsed to the polished wooden floor. Grabbing the fifteen-shot Glock from Marlon’s hip rig, Mac panted for breath and heard someone running up the stairs.
Turning for the window again, Mac looked down on Marlon, whose mouth was open in surprise, still unable to get air in.
‘Legs up, under the chin,’ said Mac, making for the window and launching himself at the vegetable patch. Throwing himself out so he’d land sideways with his right hip falling first, Mac hoped he could save his left knee. It was a trick he’d learned in the Parachute Regiment’s P-company years ago, and the landing worked okay, if getting a face full of cabbage counted as a success.
Standing, he ran for the garden wall and clambered up it, straining at the top of the bricks as Urquhart got to the window.
Urquhart yelled, ‘Macca! You’re making a mistake!’
But Mac was over the wall and running, the stolen Glock now jammed in his waistband. The humidity was terrible on the street and Mac could feel another monsoonal downpour building. Deciding not to work any fancy patterns or routes, he headed directly towards the Holiday International, keeping his black baseball cap pulled low.
Going in the back way, through the laundry and the trade entrances, Mac emerged at the lobby and held back by the newspaper racks until he’d surveyed the reception desk. Looking down briefly, something caught his eye and he shook his head to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Breathing out, he dragged his eyes away from the newspaper and got back to the immediate job.
At the reception desk he was queried when his blue eyes didn’t match what they expected ‘Chan’ to look like. Reciting the California address he’d memorised from Sam’s licence, he asked for the room key and was given it as he slapped twenty US dollars on the counter.
The ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign was where he’d left it and he couldn’t see any evidence of someone having been in his room. Panting, Mac walked to the wall beside the windows and cased the hotel driveway, looking for overly enthusiastic walking or driving.
Having seen nothing after five minutes, he unscrewed a light bulb from a wall light, entered the bathroom and replaced the main bathroom light bulb. Placing Marlon’s Glock on the bathroom counter where he could grab it from the shower cubicle, he stripped and stood under the hot shower, his hands shaking slightly as the muscles in his face spasmed. He was back in the game, but he didn’t know if he could do it anymore. Dealing with the violence was not as easy as he remembered – the Israelis’ ambush at the apartment building and the rocket attack at the docks, and then the light-bulb bomb at the Cambodiana. Poh being thrown into the night like a piece of garbage, by a bomb intended for Tranh or Mac. He felt vulnerable, exposed and confused – he was in the middle of something he didn’t understand and now his own side had turned on him.
Yet that wasn’t what had him shaking. It was what he’d seen on the front page of the
Saigon Times
that had thrown him into a spin. The headline read, aussie cops arrive for nightclub murder, and below he’d seen the photo of a tall brunette in a black trouser suit and white blouse being let into a white Holden Caprice as she spoke into a mobile phone.
He knew that face and knew the way that mouth worked when it was telling some dumb-arse to pull his finger out and get busy. The caption read,
Agent Jennifer Toohey of the Australian Federal Police arrives at Tan Son Nhat yesterday to assist Saigon detectives with the Jim Quirk homicide investigation in Cholon.
She was coming into an environment where people were trying to kill him. Mac had always promised not to cross into her professional life, but he didn’t know if he could hold back in this case. When the bullets started flying, Jenny wasn’t a cop – she was his wife.
Chapter 31
The brown contact lenses were the final touch, the exclamation mark that took the black hair, dark moustache, wire-rimmed spectacles and chubby cheeks and altered the entire context.
It was 8.04 am and Mac had enjoyed a deep sleep. He felt recharged.
Peering at himself in the mirror of the hotel bathroom, he saw Brandon Collier. Collier was the non-sanctioned identity Mac had created a decade earlier when he needed an option for those times when people who were supposed to care about his welfare cared more for their upward ambitions. It was against the rules of Aussie SIS – you could only work with identities issued to you, and when the gig was done you had to sign them back in. Mac had a standing riposte to those rules: he who runs the risk of being tortured in a Zamboanga warehouse gets to choose his escape routes.
His baggy chinos and long-sleeved business shirt from Lowes matched the boat shoes into which he put twenty-cent pieces to make his gait more awkward. Amateur disguisers always focused on the hair and face; professionals did that too, but they took particular care with the gait and eyes. Once you’d been in the field for a couple of years, you scanned every room for eyes – their colour and intent became a beacon. As for gait, Mac could tell a soldier or professional sportsperson by the way they carried themselves, and the first thing he tried to do with his Brandon Collier creation was to take away the physically confident gait. Coins in the shoes took the emphasis from the torso and the hips and put the walking effort into the legs. If a spook or a cop or a soldier was on the lookout for Mac, they might find him but it wouldn’t be because he looked like trouble.
Peeling back the liner of his wheelie bag, Mac lifted a packet of IDs from their hide and slipped the rubber band off them. There was a Western Australian driver’s licence, a WA Health Department inspector’s ID and a security card of the type needed to work in restricted areas of airports and docks. The one he pulled out and pocketed was the International Red Cross medical accreditation – this classified him as an Australian with two science/medicine degrees and listed him as ‘Medical Doctor – general.’
The only part of the Brandon Collier act that didn’t add up was the Colt Defender automatic handgun that was tucked into the waistband at the small of his back.
The walk around the block was pleasant enough except for the growing humidity. Mac estimated the temperature at around thirty-eight degrees which, for someone who had grown up in Queensland, wasn’t too oppressive. It was the ninety-eight per cent humidity that sapped the energy.
Phoning the American Embassy, Mac asked for the chargé d’affaires. ‘What’s his name again? Jim or John . . .’
‘No, Clayton de Lisle is our chargé d’affaires. Just putting you through now.’
‘I’m losing you,’ said Mac, hanging up.
He walked both sides of the street, stopped at a street cart, where he bought a baguette with pâté and cheese, and spent some time looking in shop windows, looking for observers. There were none he could see, and having got his new gait in sync and bought a box of chocolates, he made for his destination.
The Calmette Hospital layout was explained in the lobby by a diagram of wards and Mac inspected them rather than approach the main desk.
Wandering through the corridors, he followed the blue signs that said
Intensive Care
, taking several doglegs and a flight of stairs to the first floor, and going through a set of heavy plastic curtains with
Intensive Care Ward
stamped on them below the Khmer version.
He headed for the nursing sister’s desk and casually pulled his IRC card from his pocket and tabled it.
‘Dr Collier – I’m here for Samuel Chan,’ said Mac with the condescending yet trustworthy smile of the medical doctor. ‘A nine o’clock, I believe?’
The nurse, a friendly local in her early thirties, looked down at a clipboard on her desk and nibbled her lip. Then she looked at her watch: 9.03 am.
‘There’s no record of a medical visit, Dr . . .’
‘Collier – Brandon Collier,’ said Mac. ‘Perhaps we should get Mr de Lisle on the phone. He’s the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy.’
‘Umm, perhaps I should ask –’
‘I can get Clayton de Lisle down here right away, but he probably doesn’t want to be disturbed; he asked me to handle this with Mr Chan.’
The girl capitulated. ‘Okay, I take you.’
Few South-East Asian hospitals wanted to annoy the Americans. The USA gave away as much in humanitarian aid each year as the entire GDP of countries like Lebanon and Sri Lanka. There were hospitals and medical centres all over Asia and Africa that would not exist if it weren’t for the US taxpayer, a small point often ignored by the West’s Marxists.
Mac followed the nurse and, as directed, walked into the ward with the blue ‘D’ over the door. Sam Chan was propped up on pillows, the
Economist
open in front of him. He was peering over it at Mac.
‘Samuel Chan,’ said Mac, approaching and offering his hand. ‘The man they couldn’t root, shoot or electrocute.’
Chan looked confused and his hand slipped under the sheets.
‘Sammy, it’s me, McQueen,’ said Mac. ‘Don’t shoot, I only work here.’
Chan smiled and let the tension out of his shoulder. Whatever he’d grabbed beside him, he now let go of and shook hands with the palm grip – an almost total giveaway that his background was military.
‘McQueen – glad you showed.’
‘Why?’ Mac took a seat beside the bed and handed over the chocolates. ‘You miss me?’
‘Nope. I wanted to thank you for the . . . last night, you know?’
‘Yeah, no worries,’ said Mac.
‘A lot of guys would panic, not even think of the fire blanket.’
‘Thank my training,’ said Mac, surprised they weren’t talking about Phil’s demise.
‘Royal Marines, right?’
‘Originally,’ said Mac carefully. ‘A long time ago. And you?’
‘Army,’ said Sam.
‘You know John Sawtell – Green Berets?’ said Mac.
Sam looked away. Most special forces people neither confirmed nor denied that they knew other soldiers. It was professional courtesy.
‘Well, anyway,’ said Mac, ‘John is a great operator. He was in Mindanao, I worked with him in Sulawesi.’
There was a moment of silence. Mac had just wanted the American to know who to ask should he need a reference.
‘Wish we could have saved Phil,’ said Mac, looking at the lino floor. ‘It just happened so fast, and suddenly that rocket –’
‘Nothing we could have done differently, except stand back and let them go,’ said Sam. ‘And that wasn’t the deal.’
Sam showed Mac his burnt leg, which had copped less damage than it had seemed the night before. The rifle shot had passed straight through his right thigh muscle without touching bone.
‘I’m having one more test this morning, and then I’m out of here,’ said Sam.
Mac looked around at the other patients. ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss.’
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘You and I are the only ones to have tangled with this Israeli crew and lived to talk about it,’ said Mac. ‘So we should either buddy up, or you tell me all I need to know about these pricks and I’ll hunt ’em down myself.’
Sam laughed softly and looked at Mac. ‘Not working with the Australians?’
‘There was some internal shit,’ said Mac. ‘And when it hit the fan, I was standing downwind.’
‘Tell me all about it.’
‘I can’t,’ said Mac. ‘Get me seconded and we can pool the intel.’
‘It may not be that easy,’ said Sam.
‘Why not?’
‘Perhaps we’re on different sides.’
‘Really?’ said Mac.
Sam nodded. ‘Australia is part of the problem, not the solution.’
Mac tried to guess what the dispute might be. He realised he’d have to give something before the Americans would trust him. There was only one part of the puzzle that he’d witnessed and it might interest the Americans.
‘You and Phil wanted that memory card,’ said Mac.
‘Sure,’ said Sam, eyes shifting.
‘If I tell you the story about that card, would you tell me what’s on it?’
‘I can’t make that deal, McQueen,’ said Sam. ‘What I can do is hear the story and see where you can help. Then, if my bosses like it, we can talk more.’
‘That’s it?’
‘You know how this works,’ said Sam.
So Mac told the story of the Singapore gig and the slaying of Ray Hu and the subsequent tailing of Jim Quirk in Saigon. He admitted to carrying the memory card but having no idea of its importance, and then explained how it was stolen from his bag at the Cambodiana by the Israelis.
‘You were hauled in by your own people?’ said Sam.
‘They weren’t my people,’ said Mac. ‘They’re answering to a different level of government and they’re desperate for that SD card – they think there’s a traitor.’
Nodding slowly, Sam looked away, and then back at Mac.
‘I’ll have a chat – you got a cell phone?’
Grabbing Sam’s phone, Mac input his number and called his own.
‘I’ll call you tonight, regardless of how it goes,’ said the American, as a doctor and nurse came to Sam’s bed with their clipboards.
‘Make it quick,’ said Mac.
‘Okay – but it’s a pity you haven’t run across Geraldine McHugh,’ said Sam.
‘McHugh?’ said Mac, his heart quickening as he remembered – McHugh was the central concern of the Americans’ interrogation. It was the first thing they’d asked him after they grabbed him in the apartment building.
‘I need to talk to her,’ said Sam.
‘Well, you’re in luck,’ said Mac, smiling as he stood to leave.
Sam raised his voice at Mac’s back. ‘You told us you’d never heard of her.’
‘I fibbed – I thought I was going to die and I needed a bargaining position,’ said Mac.
‘Well?’ said Sam.
‘Well, I have to go,’ said Mac.
Sam struggled from the bed as the medicos closed on him. ‘No, wait, McQueen.’
‘Call me with the good news,’ said Mac as he walked away. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’