Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent (6 page)

The sidekicks nodded their agreement.

Mac had what they called an S-2 classifi cation, which meant the Minister for Foreign Affairs had authorised him to carry and use weapons in the conduct of his duties. Because of the way the Service was structured, only a handful of colleagues knew of this secret status.

But Tobin knew, and sending him to fi nd a girl recruit was like using a cold chisel to fi x a Swiss watch. What this was really about was the special access the AFP had gained to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet during the tenure of the current government, at the expense of intelligence outfi ts like ASIS. This was about empires.

‘What about I-team?’ asked Mac.

‘Steady on, old man! I said we didn’t know what she’s done.’

Tobin laughed, then pretended to be collecting himself. ‘That’s why I need someone to just slide in there, have a chat and get things sorted.

The I-team?! Shit, mate - fair dinkum!’

Mac ignored Tobin’s song and dance. ‘No one in Jakkers can do this?’

Tobin gave him a smile that said,
Grow up
.

Mac exhaled through his teeth, looked at the ceiling.
Fuck!

Tobin changed his tone, fi xed Mac with a stare. ‘Mate, I need you on a plane tonight.’

Mac was forty-two thousand feet over north Queensland when he pulled Judith Hannah’s fi le from his briefcase. He was in business class on the late-afternoon Qantas fl ight to Jakarta. Executives were sprinkled around the upstairs deck of the 747. Still in his interview suit, Mac sat alone by the window.

Judith Hannah had a fi rst-class honours degree in law from the University of Sydney and an MA in history from the same place. Mac ran his fi nger down her bio: Protestant. Perfect credentials for the Foreign Service. But she had applied to ASIS and she was accepted on the fi rst go. Must have had a calling or something.

Many people didn’t realise that ASIS was part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its operatives belonged to the same Commonwealth stable as the diplomats and were identical employment conditions and pay scales. The real difference was that ASIS offi cers had individual contracts with the Director-General which made it easier to sack and isolate them. But they all operated out of Australian embassies and consulates. In the parlance of diplomats, they were part of the same mission.

If you really wanted to go places in the public service, you applied for a place in the elites of Treasury or the Foreign Service. That’s how you’d get to graduate to PMC - the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet - where all the real glory happened for ambitious public servants.

If you wanted to get to PMC, you didn’t generally set out to be a spook.

Mac worked through the pages. Judith Hannah had joined ASIS

straight out of university in ‘01, then trained in Canberra. She’d had deployments in London, DC, LA, Manila and Jakarta. The Jakkers posting told Mac that Hannah was being groomed for interesting things. Jakarta was to the Australian intelligence community what DC

was to the diplomats: where the action was; where the Americans and Chinese collided on a full-time basis within the enigmatic context of Indonesia - the world’s largest Muslim nation and one which had never fully committed to the US-Australian view of the world. Jakarta was the centre of the Western world’s counter-terrorism activity and Judith Hannah had been given a shot at it just two years into her ASIS career.

He kept fl ipping. It seemed to be a largely uncensored fi le, a rare thing in intelligence circles, where someone was always trying to exert their right to keep information secret from someone else. There were performance reports with the expected conclusions: Hannah was a fast learner, earned people’s trust quickly and had very good ad hoc negotiation skills. A cool cucumber.

There was a list of her specialist rotations: decryption with the British, maritime with the Indonesians, Sinology at the Australian National University, transnational fi nance with AUSTRAC, fi eld craft and interrogation in Canberra, telecommunications units in Singapore and counter-terrorist secondments to Langley and Tel Aviv. It was a full fi le. The Service had done well. Mac found what he wanted down the back. Every ASIS offi cer operated in a team known as a ‘desk’, a sort of specialty they were expected to develop during their career.

There were desks for whatever it was that affected Australian interests, so there was an Indonesia Desk, an America Desk and so on. But a desk team was not confi ned to the embassy posting. You could be deployed in Singapore, but if you were on the China Desk, you were working with other offi cers who were in Jakarta, KL, Manila, DC and Beijing. You’d probably have overlaps with AFP, Australian Customs and Austrade - the Australian trade legation. And if you happened to be on the China Desk or the Terrorism Desk, you would almost certainly be working in some capacity with the CIA and Indonesia’s BIN and BAIS, and probably Mossad and MI6.

Mac sipped on his Pellegrino and allowed his thoughts to wash over him. He was trying to see the scenario of this bird and her story. Because Judith Hannah, according to her fi le, worked on the China Desk.

Too good to be true.

Certainly too good to be missing.

The steward led Mac to a meeting room in the intelligence section of the Australian Embassy and asked if he wanted anything.

‘Coffee, thanks, champ.’

It was past nine pm local time and after two checkpoints of physical search and biometrics Mac was back in a place he knew well.

He felt like shit: needed a shave and a fresh shirt. It was muggy and hot in Jakkers and he wished he’d made better use of the Brut 33

when he’d had the chance.

Mac paused at the threshold of the meeting room out of habit.

Jakarta was a mean town for people in his profession, and even in the lockdown of the Aussie Embassy, he wanted to scope the room. There were four men around a large timber table. Mac knew two: his Service colleague, Anton Garvey, and a US Army Special Forces captain called John Sawtell.

Anton Garvey stood from his place at the head of the table and walked around to Mac.

‘G’day, mate,’ said Garvey, big face lighting up. ‘How was the fl ight?’

‘Piece of piss,’ smiled Mac, ‘once you get used to the shit food, bad air, crap service and the fact you’re only ever a split second away from disaster.’

Garvey laughed. He was a solid, bull-like guy with big arms and a deep tan that included his totally bald head. He dressed in the spook uniform for Asia: polo shirt, khaki chinos and a pair of boat shoes.

He’d done a lot of jobs with Mac and they liked each other. Now that Garvey was moving into management, Mac wondered if the relationship would change.

‘Mate, glad you could make it at such short notice.’ Garvey gestured to a chair. ‘Dave briefed me on the assignment; sorry about all the rush.’

Mac’s mind raced: Garvey had been briefed by Urquhart, not Tobin? So Garvey was answering to the political liaison arm of the Service, not the operational. Puzzled, he threw his briefcase on the table and eased into leather.

‘Quick introductions. You know Charlie from Manila?’ Garvey indicated a dead-eyed guy in his early forties who looked like a tired businessman. He had short, greasy salt ‘n’ pepper hair and slack jowls that rattled around his long face. Mac knew him by reputation: Charles Dunphy, who last time Mac had checked was overseeing the Service’s China Desk. Dunphy inclined his head in greeting, a veteran of meetings that took place in bugged rooms.

On the other side of the table, Garvey introduced Philip Mason, CIA. Mason could have been anywhere from forty-two to fi fty-fi ve, a round-faced Anglo male, shortish, out of condition, navy blue suit, cotton Oxford shirt, no tie but collars buttoned down. Mac had him fi gured as a luncher. Mason leaned across the table, went for the fi rm handshake. Mac took it, smiled. Watched the guy wince.

Only offi ce guys tried the gorilla grip.

The fourth guy, Mac knew: Captain John Sawtell, US Army Special Forces - counter-terrorism. He was based out of Zamboanga City in Mindanao. Neither of them made an attempt to shake hands. They nodded.

‘G’day, Captain.’

‘Evening, sir.’

Sawtell was dressed in grey sweats and Nike runners. There was nothing to suggest his rank or job, except the haircut and the worked physique. No one would mistake this bloke for a luncher.

Mac’s stomach churned. Sawtell’s presence meant Mac was going into the fi eld again, and he wouldn’t be directing the operation from a hotel room. They wouldn’t fl y a major-leaguer like Sawtell all the way from Zam to fi nd a missing girl, just as they wouldn’t bring Mac up from Sydney. Sawtell was a hardened counter-terrorism soldier whose command was called US Army Special Forces, but was better known to the world as the Green Berets.

‘So, Garvs, we’re looking for a wayward girl,’ said Mac, keeping it civil while he boiled inside, ‘and you bring in the cavalry. Must be some girl.’

Sawtell smirked and Mac clocked that he wasn’t in the loop either.

The suits all stared. Too many years of having their every thought bugged to let loose even a hint of off-message communication.

‘Look, Mac,’ said Garvey, smiling nervously, getting into reasonable-guy mode, ‘you were probably told one thing in Sydney …’

‘Damn right.’

‘And now you walk in here and things have changed a little.’

‘Spare me, Anton. Since when did you need the Green Berets to fi nd a girl recruit?’ said Mac, reaching for the water jug, his head buzzing slightly. It had been a long day and he was hungry and tired.

His mind was still competing for space on the Hannah and Diane front. One bird goes walkabout; another dumps him via voicemail.

Somewhere in there was also a worry that the Sydney Uni job was a trick, like Lucy and Charlie Brown’s football.

Garvey cleared his throat. ‘Okay, mate, I don’t know the whole story either,’ he lied. ‘We’re just the Indians, right?’

Mac caught Sawtell raising an eyebrow. Maybe a black American reacting to the racial bit, or maybe just a special forces hard-head with no fuse for this crap.

Mac wasn’t up for this shit either. His mind was in overdrive: why was Sawtell here? Why was Hannah so important? And why was an Agency guy in the meeting?

Mac eyeballed Charles Dunphy. The intel lifer’s face was expressionless.

Looking at Garvey, Mac said, ‘Okay, mate, spell it out.’

Garvey’s face hardened as he adjusted himself forward and rested his forearms on the Australian hardwood table. ‘Mac, we have a problem with this Hannah bird. She’s missing but the word we’re getting is that she’s on the lam with an American.’

Mac shrugged.

‘Ah, yep,’ continued Garvey. ‘It’s not so much
an
American, but which one …’

Mason pitched in. ‘One of ours, I’m afraid, Mr McQueen. Peter Garrison - he’s Agency.’

No one said anything for what seemed like ten seconds.

Garrison was a problem.

And so was the fact that Dave Urquhart had briefed Garvey on the missing girl. Urquhart was intel liaison with the Prime Minister’s offi ce. He wasn’t operations.

It had turned political. A snake picnic.

In Mac’s Royal Marines days, the handful of intel people who got through the initial training found themselves in a world of revelation.

The Royal Marines were probably the foremost trainers of intelligence people required to do paramilitary work. And foremost among them was Banger Jordan, an NCO who was not technically running the section but was the person who had a lasting impact on the candidates.

On their fi nal day of training, Jordan took the candidates out to a pub and told them how it really was. ‘The most dangerous animal you’ll ever face,’ said Banger, ‘is an offi ce guy who wants a bigger offi ce.’

Mac had never forgotten that. Not a week of his career had gone by when Banger’s words weren’t vindicated in either small ways or large.

The crap that had just gone down in the embassy was a classic offi ce-guy shit-blizzard where ambitious pen-pushers jacked up some mad adventure to please the political masters. An adventure where the bad guy gets nailed and the girl is saved. Always so clean on a whiteboard but incredibly dangerous for the people who carry it out.

Mac seethed about it as he walked along the largely deserted streets of the expat district of south Jakarta. Police 4x4s and military escort cars cruised the oversized boulevard. There were no sidewalk vendors or hawkers in this part of town. No local lads on Honda scooters crawling the kerbs offering foreigners special deals at the local whorehouse. If those guys showed up they’d be treated as if they had a bagful of C4 over their shoulder. The only locals on the street around here wore their embassy photo ID around their necks on lanyards - an international sign in the brown and black world that said ‘don’t shoot’.

In a strip of Western-style shops not far from the Aussie compound, Mac found a red and white illuminated sign that said BAVARIA LAGERHAUS. He walked past it to the corner. Turned left and kept walking. He stopped after twenty paces, turned and waited. Nothing.

No cars, no people.

He walked back to the corner, paused. Head out, head in. Looked around. Walked to the Lagerhaus, pushed through the swinging doors into the air-con darkness. A polka band played in a corner and European backpackers dressed like dairy maids carried large glass beer steins to tables. Germanic tack hung low.

Mac went to the end of the bar nearest the wall, leaned on it, ordered a Becks and made himself inconspicuous. He had showered and was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. His suit was back in the compound motel room, along with his dodgy phone. He felt tired yet jacked-up on adrenaline, his mind racing in an exhausted body. He wanted out, he wanted respectable, he wanted Diane. He wanted to fl y into a foreign city once in his life and not have to remember if he was Richard Davis or Thomas Winton, depending on whether he was coming into Jakarta via KL or Singers.

The drink arrived, the bierfrau gave him a smile. He gave her the wink, then positioned himself so that a corridor in the corner that led to the toilets was in his peripheral vision.