Authors: Mark Abernethy
Chapter 65
The house was a wreck. Chairs dismantled, sofas slashed, ceilings pulled down and drawers scattered on the ground. They walked amid the rubble, checking on the dismantled electrical goods, the plasterboard pulled back from around light switches and the skirting boards torn off walls.
The computer in the study had been stripped down, the hard drives were missing and the phone had been smashed: a sign that the vandals had listened to the voicemails and not wanted anyone else to.
Scotty sighed. ‘Looks professional. Let’s call the cops.’
Scotty phoned the AFP’s Singapore office as Mac wandered back to the living room. Among the cushion stuffing and smashed vases lay a large slab of marble and wood that Mac and Ray had sat at many times. Ray had called it his ‘Dominican’ chess board because he claimed it had been used in a Spanish Dominican monastery some time in the fourteenth century. Mac had said he wasn’t sure Dominican monks were allowed to play any games, and Ray had argued that the Dominicans – the founders of universities and the champions of deductive reasoning – didn’t see chess as a game, but as an intellectual exercise.
Ray thought it hardly mattered because he’d been offered more than a million US dollars for the set and he was happy to let it sit on display because thieves would always take the DVD player and stereo, and leave the Dominican chess set. It was his insurance, he said: his
hidden
insurance.
Staring at it, Mac wondered.
‘Scotty, gimme a hand?’ he said, kneeling beside the monstrous thing which had been knocked off its heavy wooden base, crushing everything under it.
Straining under its weight, it took them three goes and some backyard engineering to get the square board section onto its base.
Panting, Mac knelt again and looked around its edges as Scotty collapsed against the sofa, exhausted.
‘What’s that?’ he gasped. ‘Hundred kilos? Hundred and ten?’
‘This is how Ray used to make a fool of me,’ said Mac, looking along the sides of the leviathan chess board. ‘He called it his hidden insurance because he was sure no thief would know its worth.’
Running his fingers along the wooden casement, Mac couldn’t find anything. He tried the other side; still nothing. Putting his hand on the corner, he pushed to stand up and something moved. Looking back, Mac knelt again and wrapped his fingers under the wooden frame – there was a small trigger. As he pulled it, the casement clicked and something released. Doing the same on the other side Mac played with the two corners until the entire underside of the board was detached from the marble. Pulling it as if sliding out a drawer, Mac looked down at the contents. Papers, a Beretta 9mm pistol and a USB key.
Picking up the key, Mac examined it: the word
HARPAC
was written along the white insert on the black plastic handle.
‘What is it?’ said Scotty, sucking on his smoke.
‘Insurance,’ said Mac. ‘Hidden insurance.’
Walking back to the car, Scotty shuffled the papers as Mac thought aloud.
‘I think we should get into Loh Han’s plane and get to Canberra; what do you say, boss?’
‘I think you should look at these,’ said Scotty as they approached the Escalade.
‘What are they?’ said Mac.
‘Details of Ray’s safe house,’ said Scotty. ‘It’s all there.’
Mac looked at the documents as he took his seat. The safe house was owned and serviced by company fronts. Ray had given himself a place to hide out, but would he have told Liesl and would she be hiding there?
Scotty gave Jon the address and they moved away, the USB key burning in Mac’s pocket. He wanted to be in Australia, have this thing wrapped up.
It was past nine o’clock when they drove up to the intersection with the Asian Golf Academy and stopped for traffic.
‘Left,’ said Scotty, winding down his window for a smoke.
Something flew through the air. Tranh noticed it first and then Jon shouted before flopping against his window, hands over his face. A yellowish smoke gushed from the floor in thick clouds, and Mac coughed. A gas mask was looking in the window as he passed out on Scotty’s back.
The sound of car horns woke Mac.
Lifting his head from a big wet patch on Scotty’s shirt, he was stunned by the severity of his headache and the amount of fluid dripping out of him. Gingerly, he straightened to an upright position. In the front seat, Jon pushed his door open and vomited.
The car horn sounded again, buzzing around Mac’s head like a wasp. Opening the door he lost his balance, falling to the tarmac.
‘Get off the goddamned road, you drunk,’ came the American voice from the car behind. More horns sounded behind the Amer- ican’s car and a cop siren wailed.
Staggering around the Escalade, Mac just made it to the grass verge, where he fell to his knees and surrendered to vomit- ing of a type he hadn’t experienced since he first tried gin as a teenager. Jon lay on his back with his forearm across his eyes and then Scotty burst into the open, collapsing to the grass as he retched.
As the four of them recovered, Mac patted his pockets out of hope more than anything. Empty. The USB key, and access to the North Korean missile launch, was gone.
Looking in Scotty’s window, he saw two dark yellow canisters, each the size of a soup tin. He already knew what they were, but in case he was confused the black lettering on the aerosols said
Fentanyl
– a psychoactive agent that messed with the brain’s function. An overuse of Fentanyl canisters had killed scores of hostages during the cinema standoff with Chechnyan terrorists in Moscow.
Holding on to the vehicle for balance, Mac gulped at a water bottle as the Singapore police pulled up.
The safe house was a large bungalow, with a frontage to the road and its backyard facing the Island Golf Course. They drove fifty metres past it and parked.
There were three of them now, with Scotty having volunteered the car, the guns and even the Fentanyl canisters as being his. The cops took Scotty, leaving the other three with the Escalade.
‘Circle round the back,’ said Mac to Jon. ‘Through the golf club. Give us three minutes exactly.’
They synchronised their G-Shocks and Mac and Tranh checked their guns and stowed them under their shirts as they made the walk down Island Club Road.
Turning left, Mac walked straight up the well-lit driveway which contained two cars – a Toyota Corolla and Nissan Maxima from Hertz – and walked up the stairs to the front door.
Light flashed through the gap in the curtains at the living room window and Mac kicked the door off its locks, storming in with the SIG held cup-and-saucer.
Turning left into the living room, Mac swept the area and saw a middle-aged man and woman sitting on the couch in front of the TV, and two women in their thirties at the dining table.
They stared at him and Mac froze momentarily: he was looking at Liesl Hu, which was expected. Sitting across the table from her was Geraldine McHugh.
‘Liesl,’ said Mac.
‘McQueen,’ came the Filipino monotone. ‘Drop it.’
Dropping the SIG as he felt steel behind his ear, Mac turned and faced Bongo Morales.
Tranh, too, had dropped his weapon and turned, allowing Didge to cuff him with the plastic wrist-ties.
‘What’s up, McQueen?’ said Bongo, pointing the shotgun between his eyes.
‘Came to talk to Liesl,’ said Mac. ‘Making sure she’s okay after seeing her house.’
‘What happened?’ said Liesl, standing and coming to Mac.
‘Keep away, please,’ said Bongo. ‘You don’t know him like I know him.’
‘The place is trashed, Liesl,’ said Mac. ‘I knew this was Ray’s safe house, so I thought you might be here.’
‘It’s been a nightmare, Macca,’ said Liesl. Her light brown hair had grown lank where usually it was styled every day. ‘I called Jen,’ she said, tears forming. ‘She didn’t come.’
‘I did, about ten days ago,’ said Mac. ‘No one was at the house. Benny turned up too – the place was deserted.’
She fell into his arms, the tears pooling in the fabric on his right shoulder. ‘Ray,’ she said, sobbing. ‘They killed Ray.’
‘I know,’ said Mac.
‘They killed him.’
Pushing her back slightly, he looked at Bongo. ‘Can we talk?’
Bongo led them into the kitchen and Mac opened the window.
‘Jon, come in – no guns, okay, mate?’ Mac yelled across the backyard.
Jon came in from the darkness and up to the back door, where Bongo took his handgun and pointed him to Didge.
Mac leaned against the counter. ‘Liesl, I have to ask some questions.’
She looked at Mac. ‘So, you don’t sell books?’
‘I work for the government.’
She looked at her hands. ‘What do you want to know, Macca?’
‘I’m trying to find something,’ said Mac. ‘Ray tried to hide it, stop it from falling into the wrong hands, but he failed. I need some answers.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Do you know a man called Joel Dozsa?’
‘No, but Ray said his name, and spoke with him on the phone. And I’ve heard Geraldine mention him in the past couple of days.’
‘So you know Geraldine McHugh?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We were at ANU together.’
‘Why is she here?’
‘She rang me, said she was on the run from Aussie intel and could she hide out with me?’
‘Those her parents?’
Liesl nodded.
‘So you never met Dozsa?’
‘No, but I saw him at Ray’s offices once – tanned and bald. Very muscular Jewish man.’
Bongo blinked long – sign language for
I’ll tell you later
.
‘Liesl, this is important: the night that Vincent Loh Han came to your house, do you remember what Ray said he’d do with a certain manifest of information that one of his funds owned?’
‘He told Vincent he’d wipe the whole file – no one would be able to use it.’
‘And?’
‘And . . . he said he would keep one copy of the file for him and Vincent, but he’d hide it.’
‘What did Mr Loh Han say about it?’
‘He said,
Good riddance to it – let’s hope the Jew drops the whole subject
.’
‘Did you tell Dozsa about this conversation?’
‘No, Macca,’ she said, eyes growing big like a child’s.
‘You tell one of Dozsa’s associates?’
Her voice raised an octave. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Who did you tell, Liesl?’
Liesl tried to project dignity. ‘I told Dennis.’
Mac looked at Bongo and mouthed the word ‘Dennis?!’
‘Don’t laugh at me, Macca,’ said Liesl, tears forming again. ‘He was from Aussie intelligence, and I was helping Ray – Ray was out of his depth.’
‘Dennis?’ said Mac. ‘You get a business card?’
‘I said don’t laugh at me,’ said Liesl. ‘I was doing my bit.’
Liesl collapsed in tears again, and Bongo grabbed Mac by the arm.
‘Let’s go see Dennis,’ said Bongo.
Chapter 66
At the bottom of the stairs, Mac found himself in an airy basement with a fridge and several sets of skis, removal boxes and a Laser-class sailboat on a trailer.
Flexi-cuffed to the plumbing was a dark-haired Anglo called Dennis, although Mac knew him better as Lance Kendrick.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Lance.
‘Nice place you got here, Lance.’
‘It isn’t what it looks like, McQueen,’ said Lance. ‘I swear.’
‘What does it look like?’ said Mac, opening the fridge and grabbing three bottles of water.
Handing them out, he pulled a dusty deckchair close to Lance and sat down, slurping the water.
Lance stammered slightly. ‘I mean, I thought Liesl might be hiding here, so I flew down.’
‘Greeted by Bongo and Didge – that must have been nice.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, indicating the flexi-cuffs.
‘You got off that ship, and came directly to where Geraldine McHugh was being kept?’
‘I didn’t know McHugh would be here,’ said Lance. ‘I didn’t know they knew one another.’
‘But you know Liesl?’
‘Yes,’ said Lance.
‘You know what happened to me twenty minutes ago?’
Lance shrugged.
‘Joel Dozsa threw a couple of Fentanyl canisters into our car, stole the secret copy of the Harbour Pacific files. Right out of my pocket, while I was vomiting.’
‘You had those files?’ said Lance. ‘Shit – how?’
‘What’s important is what happens now, Lance. I have to find Dozsa before he uses that information. The Koreans start their missile tests tomorrow morning, usually at about four-thirty.’
‘So?’
‘So,’ said Mac, looking at his G-Shock, ‘it’s almost eleven at night – that gives us about five hours to grab that file.’
Lance looked at the floor. ‘How can I help?’
‘What information were you passing to Dozsa?’
‘Dozsa?!’ said Lance. ‘You’ve gone mad.’
‘You were the only leak, Lance,’ said Mac. ‘I have to find this guy.’
‘Listen, McQueen, the operation I conducted with Liesl Hu was authorised and it came from so high up that you’d get a nosebleed just thinking about it.’
‘So you debriefed after Ray’s execution at the Pan Pac?’
‘No.’
‘You wrote a report?’
‘No, McQueen.’
‘You sent an explanatory memo by email to your controller and it’s lodged in the system with a time stamp that says you wrote it at least twelve hours after Ray died?’
‘No, I don’t need –’
‘Hear that, Bongo?’
‘I heard it, brother,’ said Bongo, lighting a cigarette.
‘You see, Lance, there is one commandment that all spooks live by in all countries and all regimes,’ said Mac. ‘And it is this: he who partakes in an operation which results in the death of one of his own guys must immediately explain himself to his fellow spooks. Right, Bongo?’
‘Written in blood, my brother.’
‘See, Lance, you ran an agent against Ray Hu and, as a result of that operation, Ray was executed. The fact that you haven’t debriefed is very fishy. It’s the kind of thing that other spies get nervous about.’
‘Look –’
‘No, Lance, I’m sick of looking,’ said Mac, raising his voice. ‘I want to listen – so start talking.’
‘I was part of an ASIO technology outfit called T4,’ said Lance, not meeting Mac’s eyes. ‘It was basically technology intelligence, of the type the Israelis and Chinese have been so good at.’
‘Successful?’ said Mac.
‘Sure,’ said Lance. ‘Smoked out some South Koreans in Perth and found an Aussie aerospace engineer selling second-stage rocket booster specs to the Chinese.’
Mac slugged at the water, his brain still fried by the Fentanyl.
‘But the DG felt it wasn’t worth our little group continuing if we couldn’t work offshore,’ said Lance.
‘So?’
‘So the idea was picked up by the PM’s office, it was authorised by the attorney-general’s, overseen by the PM’s chief of staff.’
Mac kept the pressure on. ‘And your controller?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘What was the Liesl op?’
‘Get her worried about Ray, worried about who he was dealing with and how much trouble he was in – we were concerned about the Harbour Pacific purchasing and the spooks in Defence and the Firm didn’t want to know about it. It was all too geeky.’
‘So you get Liesl talking about Ray’s conversations, especially with Dozsa and Loh Han?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what happened when Ray decided to wipe the Harbour Pacific file?’
‘Liesl called me the next morning, early, before eight.’
‘She panicked?’
‘She was scared – she wanted to meet here. We met at half past eight, she told me what she’d heard and I thanked her.’
‘Yes?’
‘I went back to the hotel and wrote a short report, sent it by secure email to my controller, and then a few hours later the news started breaking about the shooting at the Pan Pac and I got very scared – so did Liesl. I was advised to go to ground but she felt abandoned and I don’t blame her.’
‘Then?’
‘Then, about a week later, I was told to meet my controller in Saigon. Another piece of the Harbour Pacific puzzle – Jim Quirk – had been executed up there, and my controller thought the best way forwards was to piggyback a ride with an experienced field guy who was already in-country and on to Jim Quirk.’
Mac could hear Bongo laughing.
‘How was the piggyback, Lance?’
‘Scary.’
Mac believed the guy. But there was a leak nonetheless. ‘Okay, mate. I’ll leave it there. But do yourself a favour – next time you go into the field, and an experienced operator tells you to dress down, just do it.’
‘I still don’t see why.’
‘Because the idea is to blend in. The earrings just broadcast to the world –’
Pausing, Mac eyed Lance as he thought about what he’d just said. ‘Mate, how long have you had that earring?’
‘Bought it two months ago.’
‘In Singers?’
‘Yes,’ said Lance.
Walking forwards, Mac pulled it out of Lance’s ear, twirled it between his thumb and index finger. It was a silver bauble, a large teardrop. He handed it to Bongo who dropped the earring on the ground and tapped it with the shotgun stock. The ear- ring fell apart, a smaller aluminium casing rolling away from the split earring.
‘That’s our leak,’ said Mac, picking up the smaller piece and showing it to Bongo.
Squinting, Bongo held it up to the light bulb. ‘Four-month lithium battery, mini-microphone and transmitter, pushing a signal up to five miles in desert, about two miles in the tropics.’
‘They gave you top of the line, Lance,’ said Mac. ‘Would have worked until you dipped it in the Mekong. It’s just that the Israelis don’t have rivers.’
‘Shit, McQueen,’ said Lance, face deathly pale. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Didge slit the flexi-cuffs off Jon, and Tranh and Mac prepared to leave.
‘Geraldine?’ said Mac, pausing in the living room.
‘Yes?’
‘I know you have legal counsel, but without prejudice, it would help me right now if you could give me a clue about where Joel Dozsa might have retreated to.’
McHugh looked at him. She was shorter than her photos suggested and handsome rather than pretty; Mac could see in her the kind of Canberra career-type who felt they were born to be his boss. She looked away and looked back with a more open face. Then she leaned on her knees.
‘I saw you in the compound, Mr McQueen,’ she said. ‘Thank you for risking your life to rescue me – I hope that bullet wound is not too bad.’
‘I’ll live.’
‘But I need another favour before I tell you this.’
‘What’s the favour?’
‘Put a bullet in that wanker for me?’
Mac nodded. ‘That bad?’
‘He’s ruined my life,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Lured me into something high-spirited as a uni student, and he turns up a quarter-century later to blackmail me for it. Then he kills my husband.’
‘No promises,’ he said.
She took a deep breath. ‘Joel’s companies are all called Highland something or other. His compound is supposed to be secret, but one of his sidekicks – Marcus – showed me a picture of Joel’s new horse.’
‘A horse?’
‘Yeah – and in the background of the horse I could clearly see Tanah Rata, a town right up in the Cameron Highlands, off Highway Fifty-nine, I think it is.’
‘The picture was looking from the west of Fifty-nine, or the east?’ said Mac.
‘From the west.’
‘How many ridges were between the camera and Rata?’ said Mac.
‘More than two, no more than four,’ said McHugh. ‘I remember thinking that their compound must be near a tourist trail called Track Ten – but don’t quote me.’
‘They ever talk about armaments? Defences?’
‘No.’
Mac shook her hand. ‘Thanks, Geraldine.’
‘Remember – one from me.’
Mac paused in front of Bongo as he left the room. ‘Mate, Vincent Loh Han says,
Where’s my frigging helo?
Thought you might like to know that.’
‘Yeah, well, I was planning on bringing it back today.’
‘Yeah, Bongo?’
‘Sure, brother – Didge is taking over here.’