Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  The LandCruiser was parked in the area where Mac thought the Explorer had been started – pointing over the street. After waiting for a Tamil family to get in their car and leave, Tranh got to work on the LandCruiser and found an entry through the rear hatch, then unlocked the doors. They sat in the vehicle; Mac in the front, Tranh in the back.

  ‘What am I looking for?’ asked Tranh.

  ‘Anything,’ said Mac, his hopes fading as he said it. The interior had been cleaned out.

  The glove box was empty – not even a manual or a map. The door pockets were wiped, as was the centre console and the clips behind the sunshades. There was a faint smell of tobacco, and pulling out the ashtray Mac found a single butt, scrunched up against the end of the tray, a cardboard match jammed beneath it.

  Peering closer, Mac saw why he’d smelled strong tobacco: the butt was a Camel.

  Pushing the tray back just as he’d found it, he released the driver’s door and stepped onto the concrete, leaning back into the vehicle to search under the seats.

  ‘How you going back there?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing, Mr Richard.’

  Running his hand across black nylon carpet under the driver’s seat, Mac came up with a small plastic envelope.

  ‘Know what that is?’ said Mac, passing it to Tranh.

  Pulling his hand from under the driver’s seat, Mac’s hand hit something else. Undoing a wire twist tie, he pulled out the spare Toyota LandCruiser keys – by the look of them, they’d never been touched.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Mac.

  The red plastic tag had the rego and the colour written in ballpoint on a card slipped into a clear window on one side; flipping it over, the red tag advertised in silver letters: Cameron Toyota – Kuala Lumpur.

  ‘That’s a sheath for an SD memory card,’ said Tranh, returning the plastic envelope.

  ‘For a computer?’ said Mac, losing interest as he walked around and lifted the bonnet to record the VIN on the engine bulkhead.

  ‘Yep,’ said Tranh. ‘You have something?’

  ‘At the very least,’ said Mac, jiggling the keys, ‘we now have a backup car.’

  Having sent his second update on Operation Dragon, Mac checked that Tranh was focused on the satellite TV service in the next office: a Fox News reporter screaming a piece-to-camera as his helo flew over the Japan Sea, telling viewers how this storied sea lane that separated Japan, Korea and China was about to become the most tracked and satellite-surveilled patch on Earth as North Korea announced its missile-testing schedule for next week.

  Mac snorted; the news media had to do its location reporting early for the missile tests because for the seventy-two hours while North Korea fired its Taepodong rockets over Japan, the most powerful electronic eavesdropping devices attempted to vacuum every piece of telemetry out of the sky and out of North Korea’s computers and comms links. The wall of electronic measures and counter-measures – some coming from US satellites in space and others from Chinese listening posts mounted on the sea floor – were so intense that shipping and commercial airlines stayed out of the area during the tests as communications became virtually impossible in the wall of white noise.

  Easing his office door shut, Mac dialled Canberra. After establish- ing his bona fides, he was patched through to Scotty on a secure line. By Mac’s estimation, it was about one-thirty in the morning in Australia’s capital.

  ‘Macca,’ said Scotty, croaking himself awake. ‘How we doing?’

  ‘I filed one minute ago,’ said Mac. ‘It’s in the system.’

  Like a lot of military and intel people, Scotty could become alert in a hurry. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Look,’ said Mac, grabbing a water bottle, his hand unsteady. ‘Umm . . . Jim Quirk’s dead.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Yeah – haven’t told Chester yet. Looks like the Cong An’s working on it as we speak.’

  ‘Dead?’ said Scotty. ‘What did you . . . ? I mean, how?’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ said Mac.

  ‘So, suicide? Run over by a bus? What the hell’s going on?’

  Stress was settling in Mac’s clenched jaw. ‘He was shot.’

  The trademark sound of Scotty’s cigarette lighter flashed in the background. ‘Where?’

  ‘At the nightclub,’ said Mac.

  ‘The Saloon?’ said Scotty.

  ‘Quirk was being roughed up by these thugs, Eastern European, I think . . .’

  ‘You were there? This was a surveillance gig, mate.’

  ‘We already knew about the Mekong Saloon,’ said Mac. ‘I needed to see what was in there. I was having a quick look around, and suddenly Quirk’s there, being forced into a computer room by these standover blokes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I followed them in, saw Quirk at this computer terminal, being made to do something.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Scotty, sucking on the cigarette.

  ‘Yeah – looked like a bunch of code.’

  Scotty paused. ‘But Jim died?’

  ‘I tried to help and this bloke shot Jim in the head.’

  ‘Like that?’

  ‘Five metres from where I was standing,’ said Mac. ‘I couldn’t do anything.’

  ‘Fuck, mate,’ said Scotty. ‘I told you – passive surveillance, get me a report and then we’ll decide. Remember?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, Scotty,’ said Mac.

  ‘Well, are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ said Mac, looking at his leg.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Macca – are you okay?’

  ‘We had a small bingle, but we’re good.’

  ‘Bingle?’ said Scotty. ‘Sorry, can I have the non-Queensland translation for that?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Did you beat up anyone?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Mac.

  ‘Get in a gunfight?’

  ‘Ah, yeah.’

  ‘A car chase?’

  ‘We were on a bike.’

  There was a new tone in Scotty’s voice. ‘Shit, Macca!’

  ‘Everything okay down there?’

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ said Scotty.

  ‘Look, I want to work on this.’

  Scotty’s voice rose in intensity. ‘No, mate – you’re not working on anything.’

  ‘You sure everything’s okay?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re a fucking headache,’ said Scotty. ‘Here’s my direct order: no more operations. You pick up the new recruit tomorrow and then we talk again after I read your report. Fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Okay, Scotty.’

  ‘Stay out of trouble – that’s an order,’ said Scotty and the line went dead.

  Getting Tranh to drop him around the corner from the Grand Hotel, Mac hobbled the half-block to the double doors.

  As he limped through the tiled lobby, the night manager called out, ‘Mr Richard?’

  ‘Yeah, squire,’ said Mac, his left knee not wanting to bear weight.

  The bloke handed over an envelope. ‘Message for you, sir.’

  ‘Thanks. Can you send up a bucket of ice, cam on?’

  Pushing off his shoes in the living area of his suite, Mac cracked the tab on a can of 333 from his fridge and looked at the envelope. The porter came in with an old-fashioned ice bucket and Mac tipped him with dong.

  Pouring the ice into a plastic laundry bag, he fashioned it into an ice pack and eased it onto his knee, which was stretched out on the coffee table.

  Opening the envelope, he saw Captain Loan’s business card. On the reverse side it said, Please call asap.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ he said, shutting his eyes and slumping back into the sofa as the ice took some of the pain out of his knee.

  Regardless of h
ow spies were portrayed in books and movies, the central factor in their success was the ability to move within and between countries without attracting the attention of the local gendarmes. It was one of those boring requirements of the job and Mac should have been able to operate in a foreign city for thirty-six hours without a police captain – a detective, for Christ’s sake – asking him to call.

  He felt stupid, amateurish. And he felt exposed: the death of Jim Quirk was just sinking in. He couldn’t get the eyes of the killer out of his head and at the same time he knew the shooting was going to make him a person of interest to Captain Loan. She had him where she wanted him; so long as he was in Saigon, she was going to watch him like a rat in a maze . . .

  Keying his phone, Mac waited for Tranh to answer.

  ‘Tranh,’ said Mac, ‘sorry to bother you, but I was thinking about our chat about Captain Loan.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Richard,’ he said. ‘I thought I tell her we were in Vung Tau tonight.’

  Mac smiled. ‘Great minds, mate.’

  ‘It will be easy for her, and for you.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac, liking this guy. ‘Where did we stay?’

  ‘Didn’t, Mr Richard. We drove back, arrived few minute ago.’

  ‘Who saw us in Vung Tau?’

  ‘My cousin, he has noodle bar – he serve us at quarter past nine, right? No way we can be in Vung Tau and at Mekong Saloon.’

  ‘Thanks, Tranh,’ said Mac. ‘And you’re picking up Lance tomorrow morning at the airport. He’s staying at the Rex, okay?’

  ‘I’ll call you when I get him,’ said Tranh.

  Tapping the phone on his teeth, Mac thought about it. He needed to call Canberra, have a quick chat.

  Dialling the number for the Saigon consulate-general, Mac was put through to the duty guy, who called himself Justin.

  ‘I need a secure patch to the Casey building, thanks, Justin,’ said Mac, meaning the Aussie SIS headquarters in Canberra. Most Asian intelligence services monitored phone calls out of their country, so Mac liked a secure line for offshore chats.

  ‘Um,’ said the bloke, flipping through his manual, ‘I haven’t done this . . . I . . .’

  ‘Just give me the connection,’ said Mac, friendly. ‘If they think I’m a fruitcake, they’ll cut me off, trust me on that.’

  ‘Okay,’ Justin said.

  The line went blank for five seconds, and then it was ringing.

  A person called Samantha picked up in the secure-comms section of RG Casey and Mac identified himself as Albion, giving the code to say he wasn’t sitting there having his fingernails torn out.

  ‘What can I do for you, Albion?’ said Samantha, when she’d cleared him.

  ‘Can you run a VIN for me, please?’ said Mac, reading out the VIN sequences from the green LandCruiser.

  Ninety seconds later, Samantha announced she had the data.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘I need you to query the JPJ database in Malaysia and see if you can match that VIN to either a first owner, or the buyer of the vehicle through Cameron Toyota in KL, okay?’

  ‘Cameron Toyota,’ said Samantha. ‘This a stolen vehicle?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mac. ‘If Cameron Toyota doesn’t come up on the JPJ, you’ll have to do a company search to find the entity behind Cameron, and then do an ownership match from there. Can do?’

  ‘Can do, Albion,’ said Samantha.

  ‘Then we need to match that VIN against new registrations in Ho Chi Minh City – I think we query the Traffic Police Department.’

  ‘Sure, Albion – what are we looking for?’

  ‘Ownership, I think, perhaps compliance paperwork for an imported vehicle,’ said Mac, kicking himself for not knowing if the rego was Malaysian or Vietnamese.

  Having a fast, hot shower, Mac plundered his toilet bag for painkillers and came up with his last two Panadeine Fortes. Washing them down with the beer, he gasped as he got his leg into position under the bedcovers and adjusted the ice pack on his left knee.

  Drifting off, he tried to get the image of Jim Quirk out of his head and attempted to fit Geraldine McHugh into Captain Loan’s thinking. Why was a cop asking about Quirk’s wife?

  As sleep took him the phone rang, waking Mac with a start. Picking up, he croaked his hello to Samantha and fossicked for a pad and pen on the bedside table.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Mac, sitting up.

  ‘The VIN was registered to a company in Kuala Lumpur in August 2006,’ said Samantha.

  ‘Name?’ said Mac, his head swimming.

  ‘Highland Surveying. It’s listed as a provider of surveying services to the logging and mining industries.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She continued, ‘Ho Chi Minh Traffic Police has no record of the VIN or rego.’

  ‘Okay, what about Hanoi?’ said Mac.

  ‘Vehicle rego is national in Vietnam,’ said Samantha.

  Thinking about it, Mac wondered if he had the wrong VIN – but it couldn’t be that because the VIN had already been paired with Cameron Toyota’s spare key under the seat.

  ‘Can we try Cambodia?’ said Mac, knowing how much traffic flowed between the two countries.

  ‘Can you give me five minutes?’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ said Mac, limping into the bathroom on the hunt for more painkillers.

  As Mac wondered if this call counted as staying out of trouble by Scotty’s definition, Samantha came back on the line.

  ‘Royal Government of Cambodia registered that VIN in February of this year.’

  ‘To whom?’ said Mac.

  ‘A company called Bright Star Consulting,’ said Samantha. ‘Listed as infrastructure consultants for inbound foreign investors, specialising in forestry, mining and resources processing.’

  Mac recognised the kind of front company he’d spent most of his working life hiding behind. ‘Got an address?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Samantha, reeling off a Phnom Penh street and number.

  ‘Can we reverse-search?’ said Mac, already fairly confident that the address would be a law or accounting firm.

  ‘That address has two tenants,’ said Samantha. ‘Law firm on levels one and two, a partnership of accountants on two and three –’

  Mac was fading, irritable with pain.

  ‘You want more?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Mac. ‘I get the picture.’

  Chapter 18

  The sound of the phone woke Mac from his sleep. Rolling to grab it, his knee caught and pain surged up his leg.

  ‘Faaarrrk,’ he moaned as he looked at the phone screen – it was a text. He didn’t know the alert sounds yet.

  Clicking, he saw the message: Call me. Ben.

  Rolling gingerly onto his back, Mac realised he was lying in a puddle of water from the melted ice. He decided to walk around the suite and get the leg working. He had things to do and a new arrival to get rid of. With Quirk now dead, Lance Kendrick wasn’t needed and he didn’t want some new-guard ‘whiz-kid’ adding to his headaches.

  As he put weight on the knee, the pain sang like a concert-hall organ, echoing in his brain as he opened his mouth to scream. Shaking in that spot beside the bed for ten seconds, Mac breathed it out with some deep diaphragm actions, making himself take the pain, forcing his brain to accept the signals and then get on with the day.

  He managed to get through his shower and have a shave. Then, as he turned to grab a face towel, his leg gave way beneath him.

  The consulate doctor arrived thirty-four minutes later.

  ‘It’s not broken,’ she said, poking his balloon-like knee with a wooden spatula. ‘But there’s ligament trauma.’

  ‘Yeah. Just like in footy, right?’ said Mac, trying to get the conversation around to him walking, not convalesc
ing.

  ‘You’ve had injuries like this before?’ she said, wrapping her hands around the puffy joint and squeezing the interior ligament. ‘That hurt?’

  ‘No,’ said Mac, catching his breath with the pain. ‘It’s not painful, it just won’t support my weight.’

  ‘Oh really?’ said the quack, a fifty-something expat Aussie who eyed him suspiciously over her half-glasses. ‘Just won’t support your weight? Is that all?’

  ‘Yeah, doc – shot of corty should do it. Just to get me going.’

  ‘Hydrocortisone? Oh my God – you are a footy player, aren’t you?’ she said, moving to her medical bag. ‘You’re worse than my brothers.’

  ‘Where from?’ said Mac, as she opened a steel box.

  ‘Gladstone,’ she said, holding a bottle to the light.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Mac rolled his eyes at the mention of a rival town from his childhood. ‘Fagstone?’

  ‘And you’d be from . . . let me guess: Frockhampton, right?’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Mac, eyeing the needle as it plunged into his knee, ‘just so long as you’re not from Mackay.’

  Keying the phone from his seat on the cyclo, Mac looked down at the heavy blue brace that was now strapped around his knee – the trade-off the doctor had demanded to clear him for field duties.

  Tranh came on the line and verified that the Air Vietnam flight from Bangkok was on time.

  ‘You speak with Loan yet?’ said Mac.

  ‘Yes, Mr Richard,’ said Tranh. ‘I told her we’re in Vung Tau – the name of my cousin’s restaurant is South China Dragon. We had barbecue fish and two beers. I say you went to see a school library official but not around.’

  ‘Nice work, Tranh,’ said Mac. ‘You scrub up okay?’

  ‘What?’ said Tranh. ‘I have bath.’

  ‘Beaut. See you at eleven o’clock,’ said Mac and hung up.

  Shoving his hand in his left pocket, he pulled out Captain Loan’s business card. He didn’t want to call her but he knew she’d come after him anyway, maybe get him down to the cells. So it’d be easier to remain available and fake her out.