Authors: Mark Abernethy
Chapter 36
Growing discomfort made Mac move around in his chair. The story Charles was telling him was a few levels above what he’d prepared for when he arrived in Saigon.
‘The Chinese government is nominally communist,’ said Charles, starting on his second beer. ‘But the communist ideology, as a means, is distinct from the system as an end. History shows us that Chinese ruling systems all come and go but the imposition of authority and order are central to the Chinese experience.’
‘Sure,’ said Mac, knowing some Chinese history.
‘So communism may have been the flavour since 1949, but the reality of Chinese government is different.’
‘The reality is power factions, like any system,’ said Mac.
‘Precisely,’ said Charles. ‘We’ve had basically thirty years of economic progressives who have opened up China’s economy and allowed the development of an aggressive, wealthy middle class.’
‘I see,’ said Mac.
Charles lit a cigarette. ‘And you know what that means?’
‘Economic liberalism usually means social and political liberal- ism, even if only by degrees,’ said Mac, mentally dipping into some of his old history papers. ‘So if the Chinese middle classes become wealthy, successful and educated, the next thing that happens is their children want political representation.’
‘Australians seem to understand this instinctively,’ said Charles. ‘Americans are enjoying their cheap consumer goods so much that they don’t realise the source of these goodies is at a crossroads – a potentially shattering crossroads.’
‘Time to pay the piper.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Charles. ‘Either the middle classes smash the Central Committee’s control of Chinese politics, or an existing force arises from the elites and crushes political liberalism before it creates the revolution. Tiananmen Square was an illustration of what kind of forces lurk in the PLA, just waiting for an excuse.’
‘The nationalist right wing of the PLA?’ asked Mac, remembering the phrase from an intelligence briefing. Chinese elites had traditionally included ultranationalists of the type who gained ascendency in Japan in the 1920s – those who saw China as an expanding hegemony, enforcing its political, economic and even racial superiority.
‘That’s the one. Have you heard of General Xiang Pao Peng?’ said Charles.
‘Read about him in the
Economist
,’ said Mac. ‘What about him?’
‘He was marketing himself as the progressive leadership of the future, because of his education at Cambridge and Sandhurst. If you recall the slogan
Peace through Prosperity
, that came straight out of his office.’
‘You said “was”?’
‘He was sidelined by the Central Committee ten months ago because he was considered too ambitious,’ said Charles. ‘Among the economic progressives, Pao Peng is known as the face of Chinese chauvinism – a classic totalitarian nationalist with a fantasy about Greater China that makes the Japanese economic cooperation zone look quaint.’
‘He was sidelined?’ said Mac.
‘Yes, and he didn’t take it well.’
‘Pao Peng is heavily connected, isn’t he?’ said Mac, wishing he had been more thorough in his reading of circularised research. ‘I mean, he’s related to the marchers but he’s also aligned with bankers and industrialists. How did he get sidelined?’
‘He asked for support from the wrong people, is our guess,’ said Charles. ‘He apparently had a plan for a reorganisation of Beijing, and the new blueprint didn’t include a Central Committee.’
‘But it probably included the new Chinese oil provinces of Vietnam and Cambodia, with PLA navy bases at Cam Ranh and Ream?’ said Mac.
‘Sammy told me you knew your way around here,’ said Charles. ‘So Pao Peng’s in the dog box and his wealthy friends aren’t so obvious anymore. But then we uncovered Pao Peng’s Plan B – a plot to bring the Chinese economy to its knees and, during the chaos, take political control.’
‘How will he do that?’ said Mac, the hairs on the back of his neck pricking up.
‘We believe he is working with contractors to undermine the US dollar, which in turn will undermine the Chinese economy.’
‘That’s a drastic way to get the job you want.’
‘That’s what concerns us in DC,’ said Charles. ‘It will eventually correct itself, but by then Pao Peng would have seized on the inevitable Chinese economic disaster.’
‘How does Australia fit into this?’
‘We uncovered some top-secret data taken from the US Treasury,’ said Charles. ‘It didn’t seem like much to begin with, but when we put it all together, we believed it added up to a set of protocols that shouldn’t be in the wrong hands.’
‘And it’s sitting on that memory card?’ said Mac.
‘We don’t know, but we have to cross it off,’ said Charles. ‘And that’s where the Aussies come in.’
‘I don’t see –’ said Mac, but this time Sammy jumped in.
‘Remember I told you we weren’t necessarily on the same side, McQueen?’
‘Yeah, you said the Aussies were the problem not the solution . . . Oh,
shit
,’ said Mac as Geraldine McHugh’s name leapt to the forefront of his mind.
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions . . .’
‘Not her – she’s the thief?’ said Mac. ‘Geraldine McHugh’s a double agent?’
‘We can’t prove it, Alan,’ said Charles. ‘But we’re hoping you can help us clear it up.’
* * *
After three passes, Sammy stopped the Mazda across the road from the Holiday International. Cars and minivans glowed yellow in the car park floodlights.
Mac’s old Nokia buzzed and he grabbed at it in a panic, his nerves at the end of their rope. It was a text from Scotty:
TNS, 10.55
, meaning Tan Son Nhat Airport in Saigon.
‘Let’s cover your room together,’ said Sammy, checking his handgun for load and safety before opening his door. ‘Then I want my bags and car keys back, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘But no one’s going into that room.’
Easing out of Sammy’s car, Mac lurked in the shadows of the hotel’s car park, waiting for eyes. None came and he moved towards the hotel’s rear, climbed a cyclone gate and walked through the service area of the hotel and into the laundry.
Handing his room card to a hotel porter named Nhean, Mac slipped a US ten-dollar note into the equation and asked the fellow to pick up his bags and bring them to the Mitsubishi van in the car park. Mac showed Nhean, who was about sixteen years old and friendly, another ten-dollar note but held it back. ‘This is for you if you can go into that room and get my stuff without turning on a light. You do it in the dark, okay?’
Nodding, Nhean turned to his task.
‘I’m serious,’ said Mac, grabbing the boy’s arm. ‘No lights. Got it?’
Waiting, Mac watched the service gate at the side of the hotel swing open exactly six minutes later and Nhean brought the wheelie cabin bag and backpacks to the van.
It wasn’t a bad start: no IEDs under the bags or behind the room’s door; no window assemblies flying into the car park. Paying Nhean the bonus, Mac decided to double it to twenty dollars. He’d already contributed to the death of one innocent hotel worker and he felt guilty at having to draw another into the web with the lure of US dollars. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair, but it could also be the difference between Mac living or dying.
Now he waited for signs of Nhean having been followed. After watching the back windows of the hotel and checking for movement, Mac decided it was clear and moved among the other parked vehicles to the Mitsubishi.
Sitting in Sammy’s car again, Mac stared at the hotel, looking for pattern breaks. ‘I know I asked to work with you guys, but now I know a bit more, I see problems.’
‘Shoot,’ said Sammy, also looking at the hotel.
‘I’m not a Treasury investigator – as soon as the Americans request me in their taskforce, Canberra will want to send a Treasury guy.’
‘There’re enough of them on this already.’
‘So,’ said Mac, the comment having confirmed the snippet Benny Haskell had given him, ‘Charles is US Treasury, and you’re Secret Service?’
‘No comment,’ said Sammy.
‘The other problem is obvious,’ said Mac. ‘To the Americans, McHugh is a thief; in Canberra, she might be working for someone. Thought about that?’
‘Charles is dealing with it – leave the politics to him.’
‘You want the other Mazda back?’ said Mac.
Pulling into the Cambodiana car park fifteen minutes later, Sammy drove around slowly as they looked for eyes. The Mazda they were looking for sat on its own, with no cars or vans close enough to create an ambush. Driving in a circle they closed on a series of minivans and drove at them with full beams on, verifying their windows were clear and no bodies were diving for the floor.
As they parked beside the Mazda, Mac asked for a flashlight. They got out and Mac walked straight to the boot, examined the latch for signs of tampering and then lay under the rear of the car and looked for explosives or a detonator.
Standing, Mac opened the boot before Sammy could get his hand on it.
‘Something interesting I found,’ said Mac, smiling.
‘Yeah?’ said Sammy, frowning as he joined Mac at the open boot.
‘Look at this,’ said Mac, pulling the lid off one of the cardboard boxes, revealing the stacks of US hundred-dollar notes. ‘I found this the other night, and it confused me.’
‘It’s been a tough few days,’ said Sammy.
Mac looked at the American. ‘There was a new Remington shottie in there, and in any trunk containing new firearms, the obvious smell would be the gun oil.’
‘You’d think,’ said Sammy.
‘Yeah, but there was this stink of new money,’ said Mac.
‘You talk too much,’ said the American, slamming the boot shut.
Chapter 37
Arriving at the northern outskirts of Phnom Penh, Mac pulled the van off the highway onto a dirt road that ran to a klong. Pulling the old SIM card from the tongue of his boat shoes, Mac placed it in the cyclo rider’s Nokia and powered up.
A bird squawked and tested the branch in a tree above the van as he waited. The buzz of the phone came several seconds later, signalling voicemail. Dialling in, Mac listened: one call from Scotty before Mac had told him of his new number; two from Urquhart, apologising for the misunderstanding that resulted in him being chained to a bed, and asking Mac to call him and arrange a meeting; another from Jenny, telling him not to panic if he arrived back to an empty house – she’d been called to Vietnam and Sarah was staying with Frank and Pat. She hoped things were going well in Auckland. Captain Loan had also left a message – yesterday. She reminded Mac of her number and asked that he contact her.
The last message, left three hours earlier, made Mac catch his breath. It was the unmistakable voice of Mr Red Shirt – Joel Dozsa.
Well, well
, started the message, in that steady Eastern European accent.
Unless the reporters have it very wrong, it seems our intrepid Mr Davis survived where an unfortunate hotel worker failed. Consider yourself lucky, Mr Davis – it’s a good time to return to the paradise of barbecues, beaches and beer before you meet the fate of your Vietnamese friend.
Staring at the battered old Nokia as the voicemail system told him he had no more messages, Mac’s head swirled with fatigue and confusion. So Tranh was dead? Or in a hospital? Missing? The message was either deliberately vague or Dozsa assumed Mac knew what had happened to Tranh.
Checking the call log he found ‘number unknown’, which meant a blocked number or a Skype call.
If Dozsa didn’t want to talk – if he didn’t want Mac to call back – what was the point of the message? Mossad agents never communicated unless there was an express purpose, even if that purpose was to spread disinformation.
Listening to the call again, Mac realised there were only two pieces of information that Dozsa had volunteered: that his crew planted the light-bulb bomb in the Cambodiana, and that Tranh was probably dead. Dozsa’s admission about the bomb was redundant, since Mac would already have worked that out. News of Tranh’s ‘fate’ was not – it was gratuitous, unverified.
Looking at the phone, Mac thought back to the times that he’d hidden a lie in the truth. He’d done it to make sure someone took a right turn when they should’ve taken a left.
Putting the old SIM back in his shoe and replacing it with his new MobiTel card, Mac turned the van to the south and put his foot down. By the time he was clear of Phnom Penh and motoring at one hundred and twenty k an hour along the west bank of the Mekong, he was sure there were no tails and he reckoned he could be in Saigon by midnight.
Settling between two line-haul trucks, Mac found a collection of Tranh’s CDs in the centre console and smiled as he put AC/DC’s
Back in Black
into the stereo.
As the bell tolled on the opening song of the CD, Mac resolved himself to the gig. He’d work with the Americans, but his priority was to retrieve Tranh. If Tranh was alive, Mac was going to find him.
The stocky Anglo male with a ruddy complexion emerged from Tan Son Nhat Airport’s sliding doors at 11.18 am and looked around.
Mac yelled through the lowered window, ‘Mister for Marriott?’
Moving suspiciously, Scotty carefully raised his sunglasses and peered into the van before relaxing his shoulders and shaking his head.
‘Shit, Macca, you’re a fucking worry,’ he said, throwing his bag into the back of the van and climbing into the passenger seat. ‘A bloody moustache? You gone rogue again?’
‘Nah, mate,’ said Mac, pulling away from the apron. ‘Just wanted to book into a hotel for one night without someone putting ANFO in the light bulb.’
‘I heard about that – you okay?’
‘No, but I’m better than Poh.’
‘The hotel security guy?’ said Scotty, lighting a smoke and searching for the window button.
‘That’s him.’
Scotty exhaled smoke into Saigon’s smog. ‘Get me to the Rex – I’ll have a shower and meet you in the restaurant, okay? I could eat the crotch out of a low-flying duck.’
‘Done,’ said Mac, dodging cyclos and other vans and wishing Tranh was still around.
‘You at the Rex too?’ said Scotty.
‘I’d rather not say,’ said Mac.
‘Shit, mate,’ said Scotty, sighing as he examined his phone for messages. ‘That bad?’
‘A wise old man once told me that paranoid and alive is good when you consider the alternative.’
‘He wasn’t old,’ said Scotty.
‘Wasn’t wise either,’ said Mac. ‘Didn’t stop him jawing on like Confucius.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Scotty, laughing. ‘Get me to a shower, you frigging lunatic. I smell like Artie Beetson’s undies after a full eighty minutes.’
Finishing his duck, Scotty slugged at his glass of beer and made the peace sign at the waitress.
‘I was pouched something at Changi,’ said Scotty, pulling a folded piece of paper from the windbreaker hanging on the back of his chair. ‘Hope you enjoy it, since waiting for that was the reason I had to sleep at the airport.’
Mac opened it and read. It was an order from Greg Tobin for Mac to join the American taskforce ‘Orion’, effective for seven days from date of receipt.
‘You’ve already spoken with them, I gather,’ said Scotty, wiping his nicotine-stained moustache with the white linen napkin. ‘Just so you know, you’re working with the Americans, but you’re reporting to me. Tobin’s orders.’
‘No worries,’ said Mac as the beers arrived.
‘I’m going to set up here, in the Rex,’ said Scotty. ‘I’ll write the reports, keep Canberra happy, but that means you have to keep me informed, okay?’
‘Sure,’ said Mac.
‘I mean it, Macca – I can only save you from yourself if you let me.’
‘Can you save me from Urquhart?’ asked Mac, checking out a Chinese businessman as he sat down on the other side of the restaurant.
‘I’m not sure they’ll be any trouble for us,’ said Scotty. ‘The PM’s office has backed off. So what do we know about Orion?’
‘They want to find Geraldine McHugh,’ said Mac. ‘There’s a memory card – it might contain sensitive information from the US Treasury, but they haven’t come right out and said so.’
‘We know who’s chasing you? Who ran over Boo?’
‘An ex-Mossad crew run by a bloke named Joel Dozsa – they appear to be contracting for a Chinese faction headed by General Xiang Pao Peng. ’
‘Pao Peng is that PLA bloke, isn’t he?’ said Scotty. ‘Wants to be an emperor?’
‘Yeah – he wants to disable the Chinese economy so he can grab power and reverse the trend towards liberalism in China. Unfortunately, General Pao Peng’s plan also hurts the US economy, and our American friends don’t see the humour in that.’
‘The Americans think you can find McHugh – that true?’ said Scotty.
‘Correct,’ said Mac.
‘Tell me about Orion.’
‘Run by an American called Charles, his sidekick is Sammy Chan – definitely a military background, but neither are confirming who they work for.’
‘This Charles,’ said Scotty. ‘Tall, silver-haired – about my age?’
‘That’s him,’ said Mac, wondering why Scotty was scowling.
‘If it’s the same guy, his name is Charles Grimshaw the Third – old North Carolina family,’ said Scotty. ‘His father was an OSS original, who never officially became CIA but remained one of the Brothers, the true believers.’
‘You know this guy?’
‘I remember him from a gig in Iraq, in the lead-up to the first Gulf War. He was attempting to unpick the lies and bullshit around all that trade finance being written for rearming Saddam. It was before your time, but the US taxpayer was funding the credit guarantees for Iraq paying its imports – Lockheed or Hughes or Raytheon would fill an order for rockets or landmines, and the American taxpayers were underwriting Saddam’s credit risk.’
‘What was he like?’ said Mac.
‘Grimshaw? He conducted his interviews with a tractor battery and a set of crocodile clips,’ said Scotty with a chuckle. ‘He was hard core.’
‘He’s Treasury?’
‘He does a lot of work for US Treasury but he’s more like an intel consultant for the Yanks.’
‘So he’s not an accountant?’
Scotty smiled. ‘Grimshaw was a Green Beret in the Phoenix Program during Vietnam, and then he led CIA black ops teams in Laos, Burma and Cambodia.’
‘I see,’ said Mac, now understanding what he’d noticed in Charles, lurking beneath the smooth exterior. Agency black ops in those three countries, in the late 1970s, did nothing but assassinate communist leaders.
‘What’s he doing in a Cambodian houseboat?’ said Mac.
‘Something involving Oz, which is why we’re going to help them find our Aussie girl.’
‘Why haven’t I heard of him?’ said Mac, annoyed.
‘Because you might find he works for NSA,’ said Scotty, meaning the US National Security Agency. ‘He works for the President.’