Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Sounds fair,’ said Grant Shannon, the AFP’s representative on the taskforce.

  ‘During the operation in Singapore,’ said Beech, clearing his throat, ‘Hu and Lao were murdered by two males. The operation withdrew from Singapore without being identified.’

  Looking up from the draft, Sandy Beech eyeballed Mac. ‘This last sentence is crucial – can we claim, one hundred and ten per cent, that Lao waited until he was in that hotel room before mentioning the AESA-defeat testing?’

  The taskforce members looked at Mac.

  ‘We were intercepting Lao’s drops, right, Mike?’ said Mac, looking at ASIO’s representative, Mike Donnell.

  ‘Sure, Mac,’ shrugged Donnell.

  ‘We had an agent on the plane, watching Lao, from Brissie to Singapore,’ said Mac, fatigue making his words echo in his head. ‘And there was no contact. He was double-tailed to the Pan Pac where he was met in the lobby by Hu. He told Hu that he’d been saving his scoop on the testing for when they met. I think we’re clean.’

  Beech paused. ‘You think?’

  ‘We’re okay,’ said Mac.

  ‘We don’t want to be halfway through this testing and have the Yanks complaining that their telemetry is being sucked up,’ said Beech. ‘We can’t afford a Marshalls.’

  The Americans had tested a new naval rocket series in the Marshall Islands two years earlier, in a joint exercise with Japan’s navy. One of the Japanese engineers was in the pay of the PLA, China’s army, and vast amounts of performance telemetry had been siphoned from the Pentagon’s hard drives before anyone could stop it. The Chinese liked to steal defence-testing telemetry because once they had the data they could accelerate their own programs without having to build and destroy prototypes, and they could plan their own counter-measures to what the Yanks were testing.

  ‘I’m confident that Lao kept the AESA testing to himself until he spoke with Ray in Singers,’ said Mac.

  Dropping the draft on the table, Beech slapped his hand on it to signal the meeting over. ‘Okay, then.’

  ‘Actually, we’re far from okay,’ said Shannon, his thick ginger moustache failing to hide his sneer.

  ‘What’s up, Grant?’ said Beech.

  ‘With all due respect to the intelligence community,’ said Shannon, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, ‘we’ve got this prick Donny Koh down in Logan. Bloke’s begging for a shake-up.’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ said Beech, doing a perfect job of showing no enthusiasm.

  ‘Get Koh in an interview room,’ said Shannon, crossing his arms like he was strangling his security lanyard. ‘Take his office apart, his house, the computers – you know, the whole bit.’

  Silence fell and Mac could feel the old culture clash between cops and spies reappearing.

  ‘I think that’s outside our terms, Grant,’ said Beech.

  ‘Our terms?’ said Shannon, sitting up. ‘Fuck the terms. I’m talking about the law, mate. I’m talking about a list of charges longer than this table.’

  ‘I think Mr Koh should be left out of this,’ said Beech. ‘He’s probably worth more to us if he keeps operating.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great, Sandy,’ said Shannon. ‘We played that game already with Lao, remember? And now he’s brown bread, along with Hu.’

  ‘It’s the way these things work,’ said Mac, his heart not in it. ‘If the benefits are worth the risks, we let it play out. Often we get it right.’

  ‘Hey, Macca, I went along with the spooky fun and games,’ said Shannon, pointing at Mac. ‘I heard your plan and I went with it, right? But it went pear-shaped, mate. Now if you want a real benefit, think about a Chinese spy in a courtroom, being hammered with evidence and cross-examination for a week. We could still get something out of this debacle.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Beech. ‘But the time’s not now. If we get nothing, Koh is still there to be taken down later.’

  ‘What if he does the Harold?’ said Shannon. ‘The bloke’s a Chinese spy – it’s not like he doesn’t know how to disappear.’

  ‘Mike?’ said Beech, looking at the ASIO representative, who’d been ducking the argument.

  ‘No one touches Koh,’ said the officer, with middle-aged eyes that had seen it all. ‘No one even looks at him funny.’

  Beech turned to Shannon. ‘You want a vote?’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Shannon, throwing his pen on the table. ‘You spooks are your own worst enemies, know that?’

  They were just south of Beenleigh, on the freeway to the Gold Coast, when Sandy Beech broke out of the small talk.

  ‘Shit, Macca – you see Mike’s face when Shannon was talking about raiding Donny Koh?’

  Mac laughed. ‘Looked like he’d swallowed a spider.’

  Come morning, the Courier-Mail would run the story of the two Australian-Chinese men murdered in a Singapore hotel, and ASIO was going to be listening to Donny Koh’s phone calls, reading his email, bugging his offices and following him wherever he went. They’d even have a team on Donny’s children, since the Chinese had been known to use their kids’ school bags as drops. Beech would have military intelligence spooks inside Raytheon looking for anyone racing for the exits as the newspapers were unfolded. The idea of a bunch of cops stomping into Donny Koh’s offices and tearing down the ceilings was anathema to the intelligence community; putting Koh in a courtroom and reading out the charges was simply a waste of good talent.

  ‘By the way,’ said Beech, ‘sorry about Ray. You guys were friends, right?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Mac, looking out of the Ford Falcon’s passenger window as the new suburbs flashed by. ‘You could say that.’

  Ray Hu was a Chinese-born orphan who had developed a passionate hatred for Communists. While completing his doctorate in economics at the Australian National University, Hu had approached ASIO to defect. Australia’s domestic spy agency had declined the offer and fast-tracked his citizenship, but when Hu was looking to apply for a job at a Singapore fund manager a few years later, specialising in equity investments in defence-related technologies, Australia’s SIS paid him a visit. Ray Hu was one of the smartest people Mac knew, and his wife Liesl got along particularly well with Jenny.

  ‘Any theories?’ said Beech. ‘About the murders?’

  ‘I have a lot of questions, but the theories aren’t exactly piling up.’

  ‘I start with the shooters and I come up with MSS or PLA,’ said Beech.

  ‘I start with the shooters, too,’ said Mac. ‘And I come up with questions: why are they outside the Pan Pac? Are they waiting for Lao to show up?’

  ‘The Chinese knew Lao had been compromised by the Firm?’

  ‘But they whack him rather than allow the meeting to go ahead?’ said Mac, looking at Beech. ‘Doesn’t make sense, Sandy.’

  ‘No, mate – they could have just stopped using Lao and Koh. Or they could have acted dumb and used the situation to misinform Aussie intelligence.’

  Mac smiled. ‘It’s what we’d do.’

  ‘It’s what we’d do, sure, but just so we’re clear: I won’t be dropping this,’ said Sandy, his tone changing. ‘I don’t want the word getting around that the Chinks can just whack one of our guys and walk away from that.’

  Mac turned sideways and looked at the DIO man. Sandy Beech had served in the SAS before going back to the intelligence staff. During the peacekeeping phase of East Timor a political war between the intel staffers in the field and the DIO pointy-heads in Canberra had raged out of control. It had culminated in a clever-clogs in Canberra denying field access to the intelligence database when a team of intel staffers in East Timor needed it. The first inquiry into the scandal had been a cover-up, which led to a second inquiry. Sandy Beech had been elevated to DIO after that snafu, as a ‘healing’ exercise, but now he was signalling to Mac that
he was still an SAS-trained field guy.

  ‘Okay, Sandy,’ said Mac, ‘let’s keep the file open – but, you know, Ray was my friend, okay?’

  ‘It’s okay, Macca,’ said Beech, chuckling. ‘You have the honours.’

  Mac got out of Beech’s car on Cavill Avenue in Surfers Paradise and walked a route south to the house, using a couple of zigzags and double-arounds to shake any nosey bastards. He’d always been careful, but the events of two years earlier, when a Pakistani hit man and a rogue MI6 agent had kidnapped Jenny and one of his daughters, had made him anxious about inadvertently leading the wrong people to his family home.

  As he walked the five blocks to the Broadbeach house, Mac got himself into character. He didn’t like lying to his wife, but she’d worked out most of the truth about Mac’s life and he didn’t want her knowing any more.

  It was almost seven pm as he turned into the small front yard and pulled the mail from the letterbox, casing the street for eyes as he did so. He was exhausted, feeling guilty as hell about Ray, and he wondered if there was any way he could postpone the assessment he was due for the following morning. When employees of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade turned forty, they were required to undergo a detailed assessment.

  Mac had never thought he would turn forty – hadn’t prepared for it or talked to anyone about it. He’d upgraded his DFAT life insurance policy and he’d drafted his will after Jen had nagged him to do so. But he’d basically kept the Big Four-O to himself. There were a few regrets, he admitted to himself, as he dragged his wheelie suitcase up to the front porch, but his marriage and his two daughters – Sarah, with Jenny, and Rachel, with his old girlfriend, Diane – were his crowning achievements. With those three people at the centre of his life, Mac found it easy to shrug off the career angst that so many Commonwealth employees of his age were consumed by.

  The key turned in the heavy German lock, and he pushed into the cool of the house. A horn sounded and something flew at his face. Ducking and crouching into a counter-attack, Mac heard a crowd roar, ‘Surprise!’ and then a tall brunette had him pinned to the wall.

  ‘Happy birthday, hon,’ said Jenny, and planted a wet kiss on Mac’s mouth.

  Chapter 5

  Feeling better after the second beer went down, and having managed to blow out forty candles in one breath, Mac put the girls to bed.

  ‘I hope your skin feels better, Dad,’ said Sarah in a serious tone as he tucked her in and gave her a goodnight kiss.

  ‘I think it’s his bones, Sassa,’ said Rachel, fourteen months older than her three-year-old sister, and clearly confident that she had a lifetime more wisdom about facial injuries.

  ‘Don’t you girls worry about old Dad,’ said Mac, winking as he switched off the light. ‘I’m doing fine.’

  Pausing outside as the girls yelled goodnight, he leaned his forehead on the bedroom door. Making himself breathe, Mac felt the spasms in his facial muscles that always came with fear and worry. The journey from the murder at the Pan Pac to his daughters in their sun frocks giving him their presents had been too short. He’d needed another day, perhaps a big bout of drinking or some lone surfing. When Jen’s work got too close to her family, she lashed out, got angry, got in someone’s face. But Mac internalised it, tried to swallow it down, where it festered and came back as facial twitches and nocturnal teeth-grinding.

  ‘Okay, love?’

  Looking to his right, Mac faced his mother, Pat McQueen. The party raged down the hall, his friend Anton Garvey shouting for Mac to rejoin the drinkers.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum,’ he said, cracking a smile.

  ‘This doesn’t look fine,’ she said, grabbing him by the chin and poking at his injury. ‘Been fighting?’

  ‘Walked into a door,’ said Mac, twisting out of her grip.

  ‘That book company has a lot of doors,’ said Pat.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Mac, heading off in search of a beer.

  Mac shared a cab with Garvs to Brisbane airport to catch the 5.10 am Qantas flight to Canberra.

  ‘Shit, mate,’ said Garvs, his bull-like body awkward as he read the Australian Financial Review in the back of the cab. ‘How’re we gonna do on the assessment with three hours’ sleep?’

  ‘You too?’ said Mac, as they slid over Southport Bridge in darkness.

  ‘I’m forty just before Christmas, mate – they’re still checking for cocaine and ecstasy.’

  ‘As long as they don’t breathalyse me,’ said Mac, regretting that the party had finished with rum shots and dirty limericks.

  Handing the Fin to Mac, Garvs shook out the Courier-Mail and scanned the front page. Good intelligence operators were supposed to read at least one newspaper a day, cover to cover.

  ‘Shit,’ said Garvs, as Mac started reading about the Chinese using intermediaries to buy into Australian iron-ore miners.

  ‘What?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Oh, interest rates,’ said Garvs, distracted.

  ‘When they’re low, you’re supposed to borrow; when they’re high, you’re a fool for having borrowed so much,’ said Mac. ‘Prime Minister wrote a whole essay about it.’

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ said Garvs, slapping his leg with the paper and staring out the window as they got out of the suburbs and onto the freeway north.

  Mac and Garvey had entered the Firm in the same intake and quickly become friends. They’d both gone to big St Joseph’s boarding schools – Mac at Brisbane’s Nudgee, and Garvs at Joey’s in Sydney. They’d played First XV and shared a sense of humour and a love of beer. But on entering ASIS Mac had been singled out to undergo training with the Royal Marines in the United Kingdom while Garvs had moved into Karl Berquist’s office clique – Berquist was the director of assessments who’d recently taken John Gleeson’s old position as deputy director-general.

  As their careers advanced, Mac had moved further from the Firm’s centres of power in Canberra and Jakarta, and found himself spending time alone in the field. Some of those deep-cover stints in South-East Asia had made Mac thin-skinned and cranky, prone to accusing his higher-ups of motives that they didn’t always hold. At the same time, Garvs had moved seamlessly up the ASIS tree, always remaining loyal and sensible around the right people. Garvs was now the deputy to Jakarta station chief Martin Atkins, while Mac found himself with a roving commission – technically a ‘manager’, but in reality an officer assigned the tough gigs.

  The friendship had shifted and Mac had felt the twinge of disloyalty on a couple of occasions. They could still drink a few beers and watch rugby league, but professionally they were at the point where Garvs would read about Ray Hu’s murder and not say a word about it to Mac. Even when they were sitting together in a cab.

  The box of Tic Tacs took the edge off his breath, but Mac was pretty sure the doctor was reading road maps when he shone the flashlight in his eyes. In a medical consulting room at HMAS Harman – the naval comms and intel base on the outskirts of Canberra – they worked through the list, from flexibility and chest sounds to the eye chart and a probing gloved finger.

  ‘Any medical treatments since your last assessment?’ said the doctor when he’d cleaned up and seated himself.

  Mac’s last full medical check-up had taken place ten years earlier at Larrakeyah Base in Darwin, shortly after his operation in East Timor.

  ‘Yeah, just the usual. Bullet grazes, concussions, broken nose, cracked cheekbone, broken bone in my wrist – all declared,’ said Mac.

  Flipping through Mac’s medical file, the doctor nodded amiably at the sheaf of emergency-room discharge sheets, medical-clinic slips and ship-doctor reports that Mac had collected during the past decade. There was even a medical report on US Department of Defense letterhead, which Mac assumed was from an afternoon in Denpasar many years ago.

  ‘You’ve been in the field for most of your career, Alan �
� any other visits to a doctor? Any minor treatments you may have overlooked?’

  ‘I went to the dentist in ’04,’ said Mac. ‘Had all my amalgams removed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted white ones,’ said Mac.

  Mac had heard about an Israeli technology where they took a snapshot of a person’s dental work which was locked into their databases. Having a dental map allowed intelligence services to track people from satellites, the unique spacing of metal in the mouth apparently creating a traceable electronic signature. Mac had decided a mouthful of non-metallic fillings might be better for him.

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ said the doctor, pushing Mac’s lower jaw down with his pen and peering in. ‘Where was this done?’

  ‘Singapore,’ said Mac. ‘At the time I didn’t think about it as medical, but if we’re including –’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said the doctor. ‘Nothing else? Treatment for substance abuse?’

  ‘No, doc.’

  ‘No men’s clinic visits?’

  ‘Shit,’ said Mac, laughing. ‘The finger in the bum was intimate enough, don’t you think?’

  ‘You’re forty, Alan – if you’re having problems with your ejaculations . . .’

  Mac held up his hand. ‘No problems with the plumbing, okay?’

  ‘Good,’ said the doctor, scribbling a note. ‘And nothing else? No psychological services? No psychiatry or other forms of mental-health therapy? Prescriptions, perhaps? Sedatives, anti-anxieties, anti-psychotics?’

  The memories flooded back: it was Sumatra 2002, he’d pursued a bunch of Pakistanis suspected of the Kuta bombings, and as the bombers had made their escape they’d kidnapped a young boy and shot his sister, left her for dead in the jungle. That incident had made him feel incompetent, useless and culpable. He had hidden those kids in the jungle when he knew the bombers were about, and they’d done what he’d asked. They were good kids and they were punished for it.