Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike (40 page)

‘McQueen,’ he shouted weakly. ‘Where are we going?’

Mac didn’t turn, just waved at Freddi to follow him, before racing down the jetty, his back a wall of wet fabric. The dressing was peeling from his forehead wound with all the exertion and he whipped it off, chucking it into the water. As he got to the black beauty, three kites squawked into the air. He stopped, heart thumping, resting against a post as he looked down at the pirates’ bodies lying together by the transom. Along the rest of the cockpit decking there was a lot of smeared blood and seven pieces of paper, drying in the sun. The bandage tins and mosquito sprays and tins of Savlon had held the rescued papers in place.

Freddi got alongside him and doubled over, hands on his knees.

‘Too old for this, McQueen,’ he gasped.

‘I hope I’m wrong, Freddi,’ Mac panted, leaping on to the deck of the speedboat and reaching down to pick up the last piece of paper he’d rescued out there in the Malacca. It was now dry and the effect of the water had made the blue ballpoint ink run away from the original lines, leaving those lines thinner and more accurate, perhaps closer to what the writer wanted to express.

‘See this?’ he asked, as Freddi lowered himself into the boat.

‘I found this in that other airfi eld, behind Medan, up behind Binjai.’

Freddi took it, looked at the one thing written on it. ‘Thanks for telling us, McQueen.’

‘You got everything else, mate, remember? Didn’t think this was important,’ Mac shrugged, telling a small lie. ‘I found it in a burned-down building.’

‘Burned? Don’t think we saw a burned building.’

‘No, it had been done after the Kopassus chased them off. I just went up later to have a nosey-poke and I found this charred building, still smoking.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, so whatever they were burning was worth the risk of doubling back while there was Kopassus and BAIS in the area. You with me?’

‘Wish you’d told me earlier.’

‘Thing is, Fred, I kept this because someone had written on it, right? See how the bottom is burned away so that we don’t get the full context of
N W
because whatever’s below it is gone.’

Freddi nodded. ‘No context.’

‘I spent years wondering about that
N W.
I asked all our desks, all the analysts, I asked the Indians, Americans, Japs, I asked army guys and diplomats. The only thing I could come up with was the North-West, as in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan.’

‘Pretty broad,’ said Freddi.

‘But, mate, what if it’s got nothing to do with the context?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Freddi.

‘Freddi, in our game we talk about context until we make it religion, but sometimes things are simple.’

‘Yeah?’

‘So what if it’s just the wrong way up?’

Freddi and Mac looked down at the piece of paper as Fred slowly turned it around.

‘Okay, Fred, now what does it say?’ said Mac.

The washed-out blue ballpoint writing now said
M IV
.

Freddi chewed his bottom lip and looked into Mac’s eyes. ‘Well, it say “M 4”, McQueen, but I guess that not the American assault rifl e?’

‘Let’s get back to context, Freddi,’ said Mac. ‘You’ve got Abu Samir and Hassan Ali, risking their necks to double back and destroy a bunch of documents.’

Freddi’s eyes widened. ‘It say M4 - Mantiqi Four,’ he said very slowly, looking back from the paper to Mac, hardly believing what he was seeing.

‘The part that’s been burned away - I bet - said
Operasi
or
Operation
,’

said Mac. ‘I think this was a cover sheet for a plan of their next attack.’

‘But Mantiqi Four is -‘

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Mac, looking back towards the beach. ‘Their Fourth Brigade. The second device is on its way to Australia.’

The meeting with Atkins did not go well. They arm-wrestled about a mini-nuke bound for Australia, a concept Atkins completely dismissed.

When Mac showed Atkins the paper with
M IV
written on it, the Jakarta operations chief for ASIS actually scoffed.

‘That could be anything, McQueen - I mean,
shit
,’ he muttered, almost throwing it back.

Mac wasn’t ready to back down and demanded that the embassy’s military attache sit in. Atkins refused and did what all good offi ce guys do: pulled in the troops. Jill Watson, an analyst on the Indonesia Desk who specialised in JI, crept into Atkins’ offi ce, sheepish at the raised voices that had been echoing out.

‘What’s that mean?’ asked Atkins, pointing at Mac’s piece of paper.

She looked at the paper and then looked at Atkins, waiting for her cue. Atkins sneered, asked, ‘I mean, does that tell us that whoever wrote it is about to nuke Australia?’

It was an unfair question but it told Watson what her role was.

‘No,’ she said, with the confi dence of the true weakling. ‘It could mean Mantiqi Four, is that what you’re saying, Alan?’

Mac looked down at her, saw the plain face, the boxy ankles and the look of one-dimensional intellect in her eye and realised it wasn’t her fault that she was like this. If every promotion you ever saw in DFAT was predicated on toadying abilities, then that became the currency.

‘You’re willing to make that call, not knowing anything except what he wants to hear?’ asked Mac, pointing at Atkins.

‘No, not at all,’ she said, fl ustered, looking at Atkins for support.

Atkins looked away - a true offi ce guy, abandoning a person who couldn’t hurt him. ‘It’s just that, um -‘

‘Yes?’ asked Mac,

‘Well, Mantiqi Four is also Papua,’ said Watson.

‘Oh
Papua
? You mean that famous target of jihadi rhetoric, that mythical land of Anglo pornographers and alcoholics?’ said Mac.

‘Okay,’ she blushed, realising her Alpha Dog had cut her loose and was now leaning back in his chair, pretending to look at his email. ‘It says M4, but so what?’

‘You’re the analyst, Jill. Why aren’t you asking me about the context?’

‘Well -‘

‘Because I’ll tell you something, mate, I’ve been with this fi rm for seventeen years and this is the fi rst time I’ve ever stood in this section and claimed that someone might be trying to nuke Australia, okay?

That’s context one.’

‘Okay,’ she said, wide-eyed.

‘Context two, I’ve got Hassan Ali back in Indonesia, I’ve got confi rmation that Mossad is here chasing him because Hassan’s crew heisted two mini-nukes from Dimona six years ago, but they only used one. And I have a payment of thirteen million US taking place between two accounts that have only been used once before - and that was ten days before the Kuta bombings. That same channel was used again two days ago.’

‘I see,’ said Watson.

‘Do you?’ asked Mac, his voice shrill. He hadn’t had enough sleep in the past week and he was sick of being patronised by his colleagues.

‘Okay, okay!’ snapped Atkins. ‘Time out.’

‘What? There’s a difference for you?’ asked Mac.

Watson looked at the carpet, trying to subdue a smile.

‘Know something, McQueen?’ asked Atkins.

‘I’m sure you’ll tell me.’

‘The last eighteen months, two years, have been so peaceful up here in our little section.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. And some of us were wondering what would happen to that when they decided to send the old bull back into the china shop.’

Mac smiled at the ceiling, refusing to be baited.

‘And over the past few days, McQueen, I’ve been seeing this whole chip on the shoulder thing about - what do you call it? - offi ce guys.’

‘Nine-eleven Commission said it too, Marty.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Atkins, sarcastic.

‘What, you didn’t read it, Marty?’

Atkins just stared at him, so Mac turned to Watson, asked her too.

‘Shit,’ said Mac, shaking his head. ‘I thought
I
was the cowboy.’

Atkins and Watson looked at each other.

‘Well,’ said Mac, ‘for those who can’t be bothered reading one of the seminal commentaries on their own profession, allow me to paraphrase: the fi eld guys from the Agency and Bureau called it in, and the offi ce guys went to lunch.’

Atkins threw his pen on the desk. ‘Screw you, McQueen.’

‘What it said.’

‘Well let me tell you it from the offi ce guy’s perspective, okay McQueen? Field operators to us mean sloppy reports, shonky expense claims, secret stashes of money, unauthorised identities and fake passports that they get from God knows where.’

Mac shrugged.
Guilty, Your Honour
.

‘Oh, and the weird conspiracy theories that they dredge up from their own paranoia. And through all this it’s my job to ensure they remain safe. Not just you, McQueen, but all of you.’ Atkins was shouting now, red in the face.

Watson moved her weight around in her chair, uncomfortable with the exchanges.

‘Then, when you guys have undermined the system as far as you can take it, you turn around and want the system to work for you,’

said Atkins.

‘Okay,’ nodded Mac.

‘No - not okay, McQueen. Yesterday we had what I thought was an adult chat. When you left I trusted you to get out to Hatta and get on that frigging eight o’clock to Perth. You said
yes
and you lied to me.’

‘So what about this mini-nuke?’

‘We’ll handle it from here, McQueen.’

‘
No way!
‘

‘No way? Shit, mate, you only came back on board four days ago, as a fi nance guy. You’re being run out of Australia, by Davidson, remember that?’

Mac nodded. Davidson’s whereabouts had become a riddle in itself: was there actually a problem with his controller being off the air for two days? Or was Mac being overly sensitive about the way his voicemail had locked out?

‘Anyone heard from Davidson?’ asked Mac, looking for a reaction.

‘Anyone?’ asked Atkins. ‘Should we go and ask everyone in the section?’

‘Okay, have you heard from him?’

‘When, McQueen? I mean,
come on
! Yesterday? Last week?’

‘I can’t get him on his mobile, voicemail’s locking out.’

Atkins looked genuinely confused and frustrated with the diversion. ‘Okay, okay, I’ll try to raise him, see what’s going on. But back to this other matter - I’m only talking to you because of your track record, but get this straight, McQueen: you’re economic and fi nance. The CT stuff has moved on, okay?’

‘So who will handle it, Marty?’

‘Feds, maybe. It’s a police matter, counter-terrorism, right?’

‘Who’ll brief the Feds if I’m on a plane?’

Something moved in Atkins’ eyes, and when Mac clicked he couldn’t help a nasty laugh. Garvs had once been a good friend but he wasn’t a person you’d put up against Hassan. He wouldn’t trust Garvs to make the cops focus down on the various trails.

‘Shit, Marty, not him,’ said Mac.

Atkins steeled himself. ‘Bray will put you on the fl ight, but I expect you to debrief and do handover with Garvs before you leave.’

Mac got up, trying to suppress his fury.

‘And McQueen? No funny stuff - full handover brief, right?’

‘You okay, Macca?’ asked Barry ‘Boo’ Bray as they headed for Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Mac had showered, washed a load of product through his dark hair and changed his dressing at the hotel before scarpering.

‘Um, yeah, thanks,’ said Mac, distracted and feeling a jumble of emotions. The handover with Garvs had been a disaster. It was a fob-off, a pro forma debrief in which Garvs showed very little interest in what Mac was saying. It was true that Mac was no longer in the inner sanctum of the fi rm’s ct work out of Jakarta, but whatever they were really up to, he was too exhausted to fi ght anymore.

‘You, know,’ said Boo, his small blue eyes beaming out of a big ruddy face that featured blond mutton-chops. ‘I used to run into the shit all the time in the navy.’ He chuckled. ‘All shades of it.’

‘Yeah?’ asked Mac. ‘Thought you were military police?’

‘I was, mate!’ he laughed. Boo Bray was a big, stroppy former navy MP who now ran what was known as the I-Team, a fl ying squad of cops from the Australian Protective Service who removed badly behaving Australians from embassies, army bases and trade missions all over the world. ‘But, shit, Macca - there was always a captain’s favourite, an admiral’s nephew, a politician’s son. Mate, you know how it is.’

Sniggering, Mac looked out on the Java Sea as they fl ashed up the freeway. It was late afternoon and he was being escorted to the 8.15 pm SIA fl ight to Singers and then Brissie. ‘Yeah, Boo - I know how it is.’

He got a three-pack of wine for Jenny and a Singapore souvenir T-shirt for Rachel. Then he got a bigger T-shirt too, for Sarah. They gave him his requested seat - 11A - on the Boeing 777 and the fl ight took off out of Changi at the scheduled time of 11.45 pm. He ate the meal and drank two glasses of red, and when he ducked into the lav he transferred his numbers from ‘phone’ to ‘SIM’, pocketed the SIM

and chucked his Nokia in the bin. The hosties made up the airbed and he kicked his shoes and pants off and curled up under the sheet and blanket.

He’d made a call to Diane on his way from Halim Air Base to the embassy and they’d talked for twenty minutes. She was getting better although her father was a wreck, blamed himself and the diplomatic upbringing for getting her into the life. And because of the environment, he didn’t want Diane’s mother or Sarah in Jakarta.

Mac wondered if he’d played it right with Diane. He’d thanked her for her mum’s phone number in Sydney and then asked if he was allowed to be called
Dad
. Diane had hesitated, and Mac thought he’d blown it. Then he realised she was crying.

‘Yes, of course that’s okay,’ she sniffed. ‘She’ll need that - I need that.’

The lights were down in the cabin and as Mac dozed he thought intermittently about Freddi and Purni, Atkins and Garvs, and people like Danny Fitzgibbon, the MI6 stooge. He wondered why he couldn’t just take the easy way, as Garvs had.

The problem between the fi eld and the offi ce was one of focus: if you existed in an offi ce environment, your daily rationale became the accumulation of brownie points. It was a normal human response and good, smart people got sucked into it every bit as much as the born toadies. But when you worked in the fi eld, success had nothing to do with simply creating impressions. You got it wrong in the fi eld, you could die. You got it wrong in an offi ce, you had emails and memos to prove it was someone else’s fault.