Authors: Mark Abernethy
Chapter 40
Mac stayed quiet in the back seat of the Cong An car as they pulled up outside the Mekong Saloon. Mac and the driver followed Captain Loan into the nightclub where a few patrons nursed their drinks while a young girl writhed around a pole.
A heavyset manager appeared and walked towards Loan, but backed off when she raised her badge. Ascending the stairs that Mac had climbed just a few nights ago, they reached the mezzanine, the manager chirping beside Loan like a bird.
Mac couldn’t understand what they were saying – he didn’t need to. It was obvious the manager was nervous and not used to the police being allowed in this building.
Stopping beside the door that led to the sealed computer room, Mac pointed. ‘I heard someone yelling, like they were being attacked,’ he said, trying for a truthful feel. ‘I wandered up the stairs and saw a man – an Anglo man – being dragged through this door.’
‘Who was dragging him?’
‘There were three men – they looked Eastern European, maybe Middle Eastern. Swarthy and tanned,’ said Mac.
‘And then?’ said Loan.
‘I said something like, “Hey – cut that out,” and one of them turned and came at me.’
‘He attacked you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then?’
‘I attacked him back and followed the kidnap victim.’
‘Into here?’ said Loan, pushing at the door and then clicking her fingers at the manager to unlock it.
‘Yep,’ said Mac.
At the end of the corridor they pushed through another door and Loan’s colleague hit the lights. In front of them was the internal glass office, with the exit door on the far side.
No computer.
‘The man was screaming, so I kicked through the door and stood right here,’ said Mac. ‘The man – Jim Quirk – was sitting at a computer terminal.’
‘In there?’ said Loan.
‘Right in front of us. The terminal was the kind where the keyboard is built into the screen and hard drive part of it.’
Putting her hands on her hips, Loan surveyed the room. ‘Where did Quirk die?’
‘Right here,’ said Mac, as they walked to where the computer had been. ‘The leader, the Middle Eastern bloke, smiled at me and shot Quirk.’
Mac’s throat had dried up; he needed a glass of water.
‘Shot him?’
‘In the head,’ said Mac, still haunted by that night. ‘Then he ducked out that door.’
‘And?’
‘And I left the club, got Tranh to get me as far away as possible.’
Crossing her arms, Captain Loan breathed out and looked at the ceiling and the walls, observing her environment like an interior decorator asked to quote on a job. Turning to her colleague, she rattled off a series of commands in Vietnamese.
Grabbing the car keys from the other cop and drawing Mac out by the arm, Loan walked swiftly down the corridor and then out of the club.
‘Thanks for that,’ she said as she started the car and made a fast phone call. ‘Now I have something to show you.’
Eight minutes later, Mac got out of the car in a rear parking compound and followed Loan in the back door of the criminal investigation centre for the Saigon Cong An – the first precinct building.
Inputting a code at a security door, she pushed through and then hesitated. ‘You armed, Mr Richard?’
‘No,’ he said, and they walked into the police station, took a left and went down two flights of stairs. Yells and demands echoed around the concrete-clad basement as they fronted a desk that looked like a nurses’ station and Loan snapped a few words at the young Cong An attendant who wore full greens.
Writing in the day book, the woman in greens stood and led them down to a grey steel door with a small window and the number 8 painted below it in white.
The attendant opened the door with a key from her retractable chain and Mac followed Loan inside. From behind a bolted-down desk, cuffed to a loop on the table, a thin Vietnamese man with bad teeth and big cheekbones looked at them wide-eyed. His left eye puffed closed and below it the prominent cheekbone split horizontally over a shiny skin-egg. Both nostrils were encrusted with blood.
‘Have a seat,’ said Loan, and Mac took one of the interviewer’s chairs, clocking the detainee’s blood-covered white shirt, which seemed to have a corporate decal on it.
‘His English is okay,’ said Loan. ‘Want coffee?’
‘Sure,’ said Mac. ‘Name’s Richard,’ he said to the man across the desk, giving him a wink.
‘I am Luc,’ he said, nodding.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Mac.
‘I was attacked, and now I arrested,’ said Luc. ‘I told her this all. Many time, for all morning.’
‘Tell me,’ said Mac. ‘Tell me the whole story.’
‘Okay.’ Luc indicated the embroidered decal on his shirt. ‘So I fly the plane for North Star airline.’
Mac nodded. ‘At Tan Son Nhat?’
‘Yes,’ said Luc.
‘KingAir, Dash-8? Something like that?’ said Mac.
‘Yes!’ said Luc, good eye opening. ‘KingAir 200 – also Fokker 27.’
‘Not the Friendship?’ said Mac. ‘I love the F-27. Grew up with those planes in Queensland.’
‘Yes,’ said Luc. ‘North Star flying two F-27. They from TAA!’
‘Get outta here,’ said Mac. ‘Those TAA Friendships flew more outback miles than any other plane. Unbelievable.’
‘It true,’ said Luc, growing animated. ‘I tell Captain this, and she not know.’
‘Well, I know that those planes were easy to land and impossible to clean,’ said Mac. ‘So tell me.’
The coffee was delivered and Mac offered his cup to Luc. Taking it, the man – who Mac estimated was in his late thirties – pushed his arms onto the table and eyed Loan before turning back to Mac with a conspiratorial look.
‘You must carry some strange passengers,’ said Mac.
‘Yes, and when I fly Mr Smith and his friends, it start normal.’
‘Who is Mr Smith?’
‘He the man who hire us two month ’go. We flew him Saigon to Stung Treng province and north from Banlung,’ said Luc. These were the wild northern provinces of Cambodia – the final outposts of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge and all the child slavery and heroin production that was part of the communist utopia.
‘What does Mr Smith look like, Luc?’
‘He not skinny, but not big neither,’ said Luc, looking at the table like he was appraising a wine. ‘He got tan, and he the bald.’
‘Strong eyes?’ said Mac.
‘
Yes
,’ said Luc, sitting to attention. ‘Very strong eye, very dark eye.’
‘You own North Star?’ said Mac.
‘No, mister,’ said Luc. ‘But Mr Smith only want deal with me. He pay in cash, but I the one who deal with it.’
‘What are you flying to Cambodia?’
‘People, bags,’ said Luc.
‘You look in the bags?’ said Mac, winking.
Luc looked embarrassed. ‘Only once. It was much, much money – American money.’
‘Anything else you carry?’
‘Whatever they want.’
‘They?’
‘Mr Smith have friends – maybe ten.’
‘Mr Smith’s friends – they businessmen? Engineers? Soldiers?’
Shrugging, Luc looked away. ‘Some, like me; some, they are like you, mister.’
‘Aussie?’
‘No,’ said Luc, miming to indicate muscles.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Mac, aware that Loan was smiling beside him. ‘Five days ago, maybe Mr Smith is in a hurry. You remember that night?’
Luc blushed through his facial injuries, averted his eyes.
‘It was a crazy night, huh?’ said Mac, nodding and smiling. ‘Lots going on?’
‘Yes,’ said Luc.
‘What happened?’
‘Mr Smith call me on cell phone, tell me he need the plane urgent, right?’
‘What time?’
‘Three in morning,’ said Luc. ‘My wife real angry.’
‘So you go to the airport?’
‘Yes, and pick up engineer on way.’
‘And then?’
‘Mr Smith and his friends are waiting, and we get plane ready, and they come on board.’
‘Were they relaxed?’
‘No! They nervous and Mr Smith angry with me.’
‘Why?’
‘’Cos when I ask if the woman is okay to fly, he grab me by throat and tell me, “There is no woman – you never saw woman.”’
‘Tell me about the woman,’ said Mac calmly, though his pulse was jumping.
‘She tired, or maybe drug.’
‘She Vietnamese, Cambodian?’
‘No,’ said Luc, shaking his head. ‘When I close the main hatch, I hear her speak to Mr Smith and she Aussie, mister. She talk like you – she look like you.’
‘And then?’
‘I fly to airfield in north of Stung Treng, I land and Mr Smith give me cash.’
‘Some for North Star, some for you?’
‘Yes, mister,’ he said, looking at the floor. ‘I not racish – I like Aussie. I try help the woman.’
‘Sure,’ said Mac. ‘You remember the airfield?’
‘I know how to get there, and it in flight log,’ he said. ‘But airfield not on map.’
‘So what happened, Luc – you get in a fight?’ said Mac, thinking he would need to get this man out of the cells.
‘No, I going work at airport this morning and then I kidnap,’ he said, lip quivering.
Mac averted his eyes. ‘By Mr Smith?’
‘No. The men, they beat me, want to know where the Uc woman is.’
‘This is the woman on your plane? The drugged one?’
‘Yes – they say, “Where Geralin? Where Geralin?”’
‘Geraldine?’ said Mac.
‘Yes – that what I say. I tell them the place I take her has no name, but they don’t believe me.’
‘They?’
‘A big ape – I think he police or soldier,’ said Luc, eyes moistening.
‘And?’
‘And very big Aussie,’ said Luc, shaking his head at the memory.
‘He look like me too?’ said Mac.
‘No – he dark. Very dark and very big.’
‘The other one?’ said Mac.
‘He same as you – but he Indonesi, Philippine maybe,’ said Luc.
‘What you tell him?’
‘I tell him it all, mister,’ said Luc, crying now. ‘He . . . he . . .’
‘He frighten you, Luc?’
‘Yes!’ said Luc. ‘I put my foot through window when they putting the bag over my head.’
‘The bag?’
‘Yes, they want me to fly them to Geralin!’
‘And then the police came?’
‘No – my engineer ask if I okay.’
‘Where did this happen?’ said Mac, confused.
‘In toilet, at work,’ said Luc, tears on his cheeks. ‘They waiting for me.’
‘Tell me about these people,’ said Mac. ‘How did they speak? Walk?’
‘The big ape – he call me “brother” all time, and then he hit me.’
‘Did you hear a name?’ said Mac.
‘Yes – I tell her,’ he said, pointing at Loan.
‘Tell me.’
‘The biggest one, he call the ape
Bongo
.’
‘Bongo?’ said Mac.
‘Yes,’ said Luc, nodding too hard. ‘Bongo – and he say he coming back.’
Chapter 41
Grabbing the second round of beers from the waiter’s tray, Mac put them on the table in front of Scotty.
‘So, what have we got?’ said Scotty. ‘Bongo and this Aussie try to beat a destination out of Luc, but the airfield doesn’t have a name – though there’re coordinates in the flight logs?’
‘Correct.’
‘So you ask Captain Loan if she has seized the logs, and she says they were stolen?’
‘A clerk at North Star looks up from her desk half an hour after Luc was kidnapped,’ said Mac. ‘A large Filipino man in a black trop shirt is standing in the operations office – he simply tells her to hand over the logs for the F-27s.’
‘Fokker Friendships?’
‘Yes – and the clerk hands over the logs.’
‘And Bongo walks out?’
‘Yes – there’s also an unconscious manager on the floor.’
‘A manager?’
Mac looked around the roof bar of the Caravelle Hotel. ‘A manager tried to stop Bongo’s requisition, and suffered a strike to the carotid artery, on the right side of his neck.’
Scotty shook his head. ‘Jesus.’
‘Anyway, Bongo has the logs . . .’
‘So Operation Orion needs Luc?’
Scotty’s phone trilled, and he frowned as he saw the ID on the screen and took the call.
‘Nah, nah, Davo,’ said Scotty into the phone. ‘Albion will be working with Orion on the joint venture – no one else.’ He rolled his eyes.
Waiters raced to clear tables on the roof terrace. The afternoon monsoon downpour was about to start and a stream of tourists had charged into the bar to escape the impending deluge.
‘Listen, Davo,’ said Scotty, in the non-carrying voice of the veteran spook, ‘it’s not my call. Our partners want Albion, not your bloke.’
Scotty raised his eyebrows at Mac – Urquhart obviously wanted Lance inserted into Operation Orion.
‘No, Davo,’ said Scotty. ‘He can’t be a lone wolf, because I’m running him, okay? When I know something, you’ll know.’
Laughing as he rang off, Scotty sat back in the cane sofa. ‘That bloke never stops, does he?’
‘Urquhart?’ said Mac, taking a drink.
‘Says you only remained in Indochina on his say-so, dependent on information from the Saigon cops,’ said Scotty. ‘That true?’
‘It was, but then he claimed to have cut me loose. Anyway, you speak with Yossi?’ said Mac.
Scotty knew Saba’s mate, Yossi, and he’d promised to put a call in to him and find out about the Mossad shootouts in northern Cambodia.
‘He wasn’t entirely forthcoming, which means whatever they’re working on is probably current.’
‘He confirm Joel Dozsa?’
‘He didn’t correct me when I named him,’ said Scotty. ‘And he was adamant that Dozsa’s team is working with a Chinese cadre in northern Cambodia.’
‘What are they working on?’
‘Yossi didn’t want to talk about it – said the gig was tailing the Mossad hit squad out of Bangers and up into Cambodia. That was their interest.’
‘Hit squad?’ said Mac.
‘They weren’t going to a tea party with Dozsa,’ said Scotty, stopping as two businessmen sat down at the neighbouring table. A loud woman joined the men, and Scotty relaxed.
‘So, how does that work?’ said Mac. ‘The Mossad tells Dozsa to come in and debrief, and when he refuses, they decide to finish it?’
‘Who knows what you have to do to get a death sentence from the Mossad?’ said Scotty. ‘All I know is that Yossi’s no wimp but he was spooked by what happened.’
‘The killings?’
‘The Mossad hit team travelled as Australian forestry guys and they stayed at a b&b across the river from Stung Treng.’
‘Nice area.’
‘Yeah, and one evening the Mossad team gets back from surveying the forests, and the bathroom blows up.’
‘Fuck,’ said Mac, looking around.
‘Yeah, thought you’d like that, after your welcome at the Cambodiana.’
Mac controlled his shaky hand as he gulped at his beer. ‘Yossi saw all this?’
‘Yossi told me the surviving hit man staggers out into the yard, half his face torn off by the blast, and a pick-up truck arrives. Dozsa jumps out and pops this dazed bloke in the head. Two other Israelis clear the remaining body with a black vinyl bag, then they throw all the bodies in the back of the truck.’
‘Tidy guys.’
‘Yeah – then they torch the place.’ Scotty shook his head. ‘Whole thing is over in thirty seconds.’
Mac sagged in his chair. ‘I feel safer now, thanks, mate.’
‘By the way, guess who I saw coming out of the New World Hotel this arvo?’
‘No idea, champ,’ said Mac, wondering if he could fit in another beer.
‘Tall, dark . . .’
‘This twenty questions?’
‘Gorgeous sheila – fights like a bloke.’
‘Watch it,’ said Mac, realising who Scotty was talking about.
‘Look, Macca, I should have told you this earlier, I just forgot.’
‘Told me what?’
‘She saw me,’ said Scotty.
‘Oh, great.’
‘Yeah – and she talked to me.’
‘Fuck’s sake, Scotty.’
‘It gets worse – I think she knows you’re in town.’
‘How?’ said Mac.
‘I don’t know, mate. She asked me how you were going, and I said fine, and she starts talking about Auckland.’
‘Shit!’
‘Yeah, guess my face gave it away,’ said Scotty.
‘How did you leave it?’
‘You know Jen,’ said Scotty. ‘Smiling, but staring straight through me.’
Having arranged the meeting for the next morning with Charles, promising to get Luc on the team, Mac eased back on the sofa in the living area of his suite and watched CNN. The headline story was still the North Korean missiles and the Japanese and Chinese response to them. The Japanese military was constitutionally a self-defence shield and Mac noticed that no one from the Japanese government or military would comment on the missile tests. But CNN had found a Japanese academic who taught at UCLA, whose name and number had probably been slipped to the media by Japan’s intelligence agencies. She was smart, a good talker with fluent English and her arguments neatly fitted with those of the foreign policy hawks who circled Washington DC: ‘Last year’s tests of the so-called communications satellites by North Korea revealed no satellites were actually put into orbit,’ said the academic. ‘Pyongyang does not have a space program – they have a ballistic missile program with nuclear capability and using this program to intimidate Japan is not only provocative but probably illegal.’
The journalist asked if there was a new arms race in North Asia and the academic sidestepped that one. Mac sniggered: Japan had breeder reactors that could produce plutonium and its own ‘space program’ was essentially ICBMs in disguise.
The next story showed Captain Loan walking into the Cong An building and then file pictures of Jim Quirk and Geraldine McHugh flashed onto the screen. The reporter – standing outside the Cong An’s first precinct building in Saigon – said the Australian government was remaining tight-lipped about the circumstances of the murder/disappearance of this Canberra power couple, but that the minister for foreign affairs had warned the McHugh family against employing mercenaries who might interfere with the investigations.
Hitting the mute button, Mac looked at his watch: 7.08 pm.
Dialling Captain Loan’s number, Mac waited for the call to be answered.
‘Captain,’ he said. ‘Davis here – you still at work?’
‘Here till eight,’ said Loan.
‘Can I come down?’
‘Like I say,’ said Loan. ‘I finish at eight.’
The red sunset cast a pall on the white concrete and mirror glass of the Cong An building as Mac walked through the swing doors and asked for Captain Loan. Before he could sit in the waiting area, a young woman in Cong An greens arrived and asked him to follow her downstairs to the cells and interview rooms.
Questions, raised voices and answers echoed around the concrete bunker as Mac waited in a chair beside the administration desk. He smelled the muddy dampness and remembered how much of Saigon’s history included underground bunkers, tunnels and escape routes. It was a city that seemed as comfortable with its hidden aspects as it was with its official story.
A red light flashed above a door. The attendant walked to it and walked out twenty seconds later with Luc. They turned away from Mac to return to a cell but the pilot caught Mac’s eye and gave a smile as he was led down the corridor.
Deciding to have a nosey-poke, Mac stood and sauntered the fifteen paces to the door Luc had come out of. Peering through the small glass window he saw two figures up against the door, their faces framed like a picture.
Reeling to get out of there, Mac couldn’t make his feet move before the door swung open and the women moved towards him.
‘Mr Richard,’ said Captain Loan, her face a mask.
The other woman stepped through, pulling her clipboard to her chest and crossing her arms over it.
‘Captain Loan,’ said Mac, bowing slightly and trying to stay calm.
Turning to the other woman, Mac introduced himself as Richard Davis, from Southern Scholastic, and extended his hand.
‘Jenny Toohey,’ said his wife, taking forever to shake his hand. ‘Australian Federal Police.’
Loan chaperoned Jenny a couple of strides away from Mac, talking in a detective’s tone and swapping pieces of paper.
Saying her farewells, Jenny gave Mac a withering look and walked towards the stairwell, her dark ponytail swishing in a motion that translated to pure rage.
‘You wanted to talk?’ said Loan, breaking into Mac’s thoughts as she returned to him.
‘I thought about what you said.’
‘Which part?’ said Loan, arranging files in her clipboard.
‘The part where you’re prepared to overlook certain things if I help you find Tranh.’
‘I never make deals,’ said Loan, looking around for eavesdroppers. ‘It’s hard enough being a Loh Han and a police detective without pushing for an investigation into my brother’s disappearance.’
Mac nodded. ‘Why not release Luc?’
‘Because he’s our only link to the Quirk murders.’
‘He’s also cooperating,’ said Mac. ‘And he’s done nothing criminal, or he’d be arrested.’
Staring at Mac, Loan took her time responding. ‘You’re right – he was going to be released tomorrow.’
‘Push him out the front door at seven am, I’ll keep an eye on him.’
Loan frowned. ‘That woman? She’s AFP and she’s not stupid. If Luc goes missing, I have a big problem with your government and my government.’
‘He won’t go missing,’ said Mac.
‘He’d better not,’ said Loan.
‘No?’
‘No,’ said Loan with a smile. ‘’Less you want to sample the Cong An food.’