Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike (16 page)

‘And the Kopassus chased them off?’

‘Yep - I went out there and checked it out,’ said Mac. ‘These are the only papers remaining from a building that had been deliberately destroyed by fi re. And, Ari, I reckon the arsonists came back
after
they were chased off by Kopassus.’

‘So important, yes?’ said Ari, clearly interested.

‘Important enough so that someone tells me what the fuck’s going on.’

‘Okay,’ said Ari, fl ustered. ‘Ask me, but maybe I cannot say, yes?’

Mac started simple. ‘Was that a nuclear device in Kuta?’

‘I don’t know, McQueen. These JI camel-fuckers have been trying to increase their - how you say - their fi re strength …’

‘Firepower,’ said Mac.

‘Yes, increase their fi repower. They’ve been trying for a year. So they have this moneys from the al-Qaeda fuckers and they are speaking to many organisation. One of these organisation is the Dr Khan, and his chief of operations is Hassan.’

‘So, Kuta?’

‘You see, McQueen,’ said Ari, weighing his words, ‘Hassan has the access to many military application, including - how they say?

- CBRNE. You know this?’

Mac’s skin crawled. An acronym for weapons of mass destruction, CBRNE stood for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and enhanced Explosive. ‘Yes, Ari, I’ve heard of it.’

Ari shrugged as he stopped at a red light and lit a cigarette. ‘So what we know is that Hassan crew was in Kuta with the JI team of Abu Samir. Akbar was there too, but sailed before the bombings. What was it did they detonate? I was tailing you to understand this, yes?’

‘Sure.’

‘You and I both think that Paddy’s Bar was local terror bomb, perhaps ammonium nitrate or potassium chlorate, yes?’ said Ari.

Mac nodded.

‘But Sari Club - too big, too much destruction, hole in road much too big for fertiliser bomb. Hassan has access to enhanced military explosive, and he also has access to mini-nuke. What exploded in Kuta? That’s what I wanted you to help me fi nd out.’

Mac tried something else. ‘What are the Pakistanis doing in Indonesia?’

Ari wound down his window, letting in warm air, and fl icked his ash. ‘The Pakistanis are dangerous. Their military and their intelligence created the Taliban as a way of controlling Afghani opium production, you know this, yes?’

‘Yep. It’s not good.’

‘It is commercial business,’ said Ari. ‘The al-Qaeda have the money and the JI want the bombs. So Hassan gives bomb to JI and get moneys from Osama. Or, they give guns and power to Taliban, take money from Americans for the opium.’

Ari fl icked the ciggie as he pulled into the Polonia. ‘The Americans and the British think they are so smart allowing Pakistan to do this, but Russia will eventually have politicians who will not take this shit from the Pakistanis. It is in the history.’

Mac stood in the shower, thought about what Ari had said. It fi lled in some but not all of the holes. He dried off and got dressed while Ari copied the documents with his mini-scanner - a device the size of a highlighter. Mac had withheld the page with the blue ballpoint
N W

scrawl. Didn’t know why. Just a habit for secrets, perhaps.

Mac’s Service Nokia went off. Freddi Gardjito would be pulling up outside in fi fteen minutes. As Mac signed off, the clean Nokia trilled and he walked into the kitchenette area and answered.

‘Hi Joe,’ he said, then brought the other man up to speed: the soldier in the tree, the fact that Sumatra was shut down, the documents and the arson at the airfi eld. ‘Akbar’s dead,’ said Mac, ‘but Hassan and Samir are still on the run.’

‘So what’s next, mate?’

‘Joining BAIS in a few minutes. Something’s cooking.’

‘Be careful, McQueen, okay? It’s enough to observe and report.’

Mac made the usual noises, but they both knew what was expected of him. There were times when observation wasn’t enough and you needed to snatch a bloke, bring him in, get him talking. Or you needed to turn a person, get them working the other side of the road.

Joe knew all about that. He’d turned and run a very high-level offi cer in the Japanese nuclear program of the mid-1990s.

The Japanese had been building ICBMs and space-control/re-entry systems, and telling their neighbours they were developing their M-5 and J-1 rockets to launch satellites. At the same time their enrichment activities included a fast-breeder reactor that produced weapons-grade plutonium. When Japan signed an MOU in 1999

committing itself to the American exo-atmospheric Theatre Missile Defense system, the penny fi nally dropped in the East Asian neighbourhood and North Korea had every excuse it needed to develop its own nukes.

So Joe Imbruglia had ensured that Australia knew about Japan’s intentions before anyone else in Asia, and with that knowledge made sure that Australia was dealt into the Theatre Missile Defense system -

or TMD - and all the joint-development contracts with the Americans that went with it. Joe Imbruglia had become integral to Australian intelligence’s Nuke Desk and he was a star.

Joe was winding it up when something fl ashed into Mac’s mind, a piece of the puzzle that was trying to come to light, a thread that connected Joe to Kuta and to Hassan. The Japanese fast-breeder was notable in intelligence circles because the plutonium it produced was perfect for weapons miniaturisation. Essentially, a plutonium core the size of a tennis ball could be surrounded by a compact detonation system and the whole device could fi t inside a military backpack. It was also known as a mini-nuke.

Joe’s running of Mac started to make sense. He’d let Mac build a fantasy scenario about leaking word to the tango community that Akbar had turned traitor, but was Joe really running a nuclear counter-espionage operation?

Mac controlled his voice, and decided to give it a go. ‘Joe - why me?’

Joe sighed. ‘
McQueen!
‘

‘Come on, Joe.’

‘You’re taping this, aren’t you?’

‘This is the clean Nokia. And you called me.’

‘Look, mate, this is turning into a shit-fi ght - best you can do is help the Indonesians put these people away, okay?’ said Joe, sounding frazzled.

‘I need more,’ Mac insisted.

‘Like?’

‘Like, I haven’t been a part of the Nuke Desk since the INVO shit

- but I’m chasing Hassan.’

‘Jesus, mate. You honestly think Canberra would send their pipe-biters after Hassan and Samir?’

Mac laughed. The Nuke Desk was overloaded with highly educated theorists, a couple of whom liked to munch on non-loaded, unlit briar pipes while they held forth.

‘But why me? You guys have Jamieson in New Delhi and that bloke, what’s his name - Morrison - at the IAEA.’

‘I told you, I’m using my best guy for Indonesia.’

‘I need more, Joe. People are shooting at me.’

Mac heard Joe fi nding a new way to hold his chin.

‘Okay,’ conceded Joe. ‘Since late last year, the Americans have been raiding unsecured nuclear labs and enrichment facilities in the former Soviet Union, okay? The southern states, the central Asian republics.’

‘Who’s been doing it?’

‘Special forces under the Twentieth Support Command, US Army.

Know these guys? DIA operation, basically.’

Mac said, ‘Yep.’ The Twentieth was a global CBRNE strike force with its own Presidential fi nding, which meant it could do just about anything it wanted. Invading countries and stealing their unsecured plutonium cores sounded pretty much like the Twentieth at work.

‘Suddenly we have Hassan selling devices to terrorist organisations,’

said Joe, ‘and the Russians are saying the Americans supplied them to the Pakistanis. Now we have some of these players together in Indonesia and it’s time to move on them.’

Mac could hear Ari moving about in the next room but before he signed off he remembered something he wanted to ask Joe.

‘Mate, who was that
other
tango you were referring to on the phone yesterday? Might be useful.’

There was a pause. ‘Sure this is clean?’

‘Scouts,’ said Mac.

‘It’s not a person, McQueen.’

‘No?’

‘One version of events says Hassan landed in Indonesia with
two
devices.’

They were halfway to Belawan - the port city of Medan - when Mac’s clean Nokia rang. ‘Yeah,’ he murmured, keeping his eyes on Purni and Freddi to see if they were listening.

It was Viktor, ready to talk.

Mac didn’t like sharing too much with other spooks but under the circumstances it didn’t look like he’d be adding to BAIS’s knowledge about Hassan and what his crew had detonated in Kuta. He tried the normal etiquette among spies and made a long
umm, yeah
sound.

Freddi leaned forward, turned on the radio - Indonesia’s answer to Britney Spears - and gave it some volume.

‘Vik, mini-nukes,’ whispered Mac, jimmying down as low as he could into the back seat of the LandCruiser and cupping his hand over his face. ‘Tell me about them.’

‘We are talking about Kuta, yes, Mac?’

‘Shit, Viktor!’

‘Well,’ said the Ukrainian, rolling the word into three syllables,

‘we watch the CNN and there is this hole in road.’

‘Mate, I was hoping you’d tell me it’s rubbish,’ said Mac, wanting an expert to quash the nuke thing quick-smart. He wanted a reason not to believe it.

‘Well, maybe and maybe no, yes?’

‘What are the engineers saying?’

‘They are looking at image and wondering what device make this.’

Mac felt squeezed. He was being shot at way too often and now he found himself seconded to Indonesian BAIS again, while being tailed by the Russians. The confi rmation that the Sari Club might be a nuke was too much.

‘What would be the give-away?’ asked Mac. ‘What would tell the investigators in Kuta that the Sari explosion was a mini-nuke?’

There was a pause while Viktor thought, then, ‘Okay, so there would be very small traces of a material called tritium. This is easily removed with water, but then it becomes triated water.’

‘No radiation?’

‘This depends,’ said Viktor. ‘The Israelis and the Americans have a mini-nuclear device called MRR or Minimal Residual Radioactivity.

This is basically a clean explosion.’

‘Really?’

‘Fission reactions have different results. Big A-bomb releases many radiations; small plutonium cores, for local area blasts, not so dirty.’

‘So, an American or Israeli mini-nuke has no radiation?’

‘No. It has
some
, but very low levels.’

‘So, Vik,’ Mac breathed out, ‘could a mini-nuke make that hole in front of the Sari?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Shit, mate. Help me here.’

Viktor’s voice jumped an octave. ‘I am telling truth, McQueen.’

Through the windscreen, the security gates of the Belawan Port Authority loomed. It was Indonesia’s largest port outside of Java and was the originating point for much of the world’s rubber, coffee and palm oil, so it was heavily guarded.

‘Viktor, how do you think we got that crater in Kuta?’

‘Either very powerful device tamped on road, or under road.’

‘But not anfo?’

‘Anfo probably not powerful enough, unless there was whole truck. But anfo leaves traces that are easy to read so forensic tell us soon, yes?’

***

across the loading bays. Two of the loading bays were in use, with large trucks offl oading containers, fl ashing orange lights everywhere and sirens beeping every time a forklift backed up.

It was in the high thirties but a breeze off the Malacca Strait provided some relief. Next to Mac, Freddi pointed to the far end of the large building, where the loading bays were locked up, and said to the Port Authority guy, ‘Let’s start down there.’

As they walked down the apron, Mac got in Freddi’s ear. ‘I thought we were working together on this, Fred - joint op, all that shit?’

‘Well it looked like you were working with Ari,’ said Freddi, inscrutable behind dark sunnies.

‘Oh, come on, Fred!’ Mac couldn’t believe the way spooks got with each other sometimes. ‘He’s down one guy - Samir’s people whacked his partner in Java the other night. And he’s on our side, right? I’m talking about BAIS failing to reveal that Hassan is probably in possession of a second device,’ said Mac.

Freddi stopped, gestured for Purni and the PA guy to walk ahead, then fronted Mac. ‘Can I get you a loudspeaker? Could you tell the whole world?’

‘Sorry, Fred,’ said Mac, scratching the back of his head. ‘I’m a little tired, confused. I can’t get my head around this thing.’

‘For a record,’ said Freddi, ‘the Samir shooter - that guy in the tree? - he started spilling this morning, about fi ve am.’

‘He
talked
?’

‘He screamed. That’s the fi rst time I could confi rm a second device, but yes, I suspected that yesterday.’

‘Are we chasing a nuke?’

Freddi laughed, white teeth fl ashing at the sky. ‘You been in this country too long, McQueen - you even started thinking like us.’

‘Well?’

‘It’s a possibility but it could be experimental explosive.’

‘CIA?’

Freddi stared. ‘I don’t want that getting around, understand?’

‘Orders?’

‘No, McQueen. I don’t want my guys making up stories about the Big Bad Yankee - that won’t help me.’

They watched Purni and the PA guy get to the inset door on the front of one of the loading bays. The PA guy used a master key and they went in.

‘So,’ said Mac, ‘is Hassan travelling with the second device, or is it stored?’

Freddi pointed at the warehouse. ‘Tree Guy says there were two large pale-green security cases in that storage a week ago. They delivered one three days ago, but they didn’t meet the buyers.’

‘Cellular?’

‘Totally,’ said Freddi. ‘The soldiers are separate links in the chain.

They don’t know the full picture or the whole set-up.’

‘Figures,’ said Mac.

‘Yeah,’ said Freddi, ‘that’s why they shot Akbar - he knew all the links.’