Golden Serpent am-1

by Mark Abernethy

  Jenny made a face. That was nothing she had heard of.

  ‘No chatter?’

  Chatter was what people in the intelligence community picked up in their rounds but perhaps wasn’t the stuff of reports and memos.

  It was the daily gossip gleaned from being around people, making small talk.

  Jen shook her head. ‘I’ve heard that Chinese naval base thing – you know, in Singapore? I’ve heard that a couple of times in the last ten days or so. It’s getting talked up again. But you know how the Chinese are.’

  Mac knew how the Chinese were. But he’d been out of South-East Asia for long enough that he wasn’t hearing this stuff. If Mac was Garvey, he’d want him the hell out of it too, before he started connecting back into his networks. He’d want him in Sydney, cut off, thinking about his new life.

  ‘No piracy or terrorist alerts in the Java Sea?’

  Jen shook her head.

  ‘Malacca? Macassar Strait?’

  Jen stared blankly.

  ‘What about Maluku?’

  He was grasping. If anyone would know, or had access to the knowledge, it was Jenny Toohey. Her role was to coordinate intelligence from organisations as diverse as POLRI and FBI to the Jakarta Container Port and TNI, the Indonesian armed forces. And her main briefs – narcotics, people smuggling and sex-slavers – were all connected with shipping. She was also one of the few people Mac had ever heard of who had good relations with both BIN and BAIS. Even in the Indonesian bureaucracy and government, you were aligned with one or the other intelligence organisation. You were either the President’s people or you were TNI’s people.

  Mac slumped back, sipped the beer, thought about what he had.

  Not much. Tomorrow he’d fi nd out what was in the MPS warehouse in Makassar, hopefully. Right now he was fl ailing. He was also tired.

  Rooted.

  The phone rang. Jen got up, took the call, and by the sound of it the caller was in southern Thailand. Mac could hear the voice: high-pitched, male, hysterical. Jen talked him down, stayed calm. She was a natural leader. Mac had no doubt she’d make it to the upper echelons of the AFP. Maybe take a right turn and end up in PMC.

  Suddenly something clicked.

  The phone logs!

  The phone logs Sawtell had brought out of the hotel in Palopo.

  Mac had read them, got on the blower to his contact in TI and most of the numbers had pointed to Tenteno. But one had been in the Philippines, in an area of Metro Manila called Intramuros: trendy, expensive, latte-sipping, intellectual. Most important, it was coastal right on Manila Bay, with views of the container terminals if you were in the right building.

  Jen said something gentle to the bloke on the other end, hung up, paused, big sigh. Made a quick call to someone else. This time her tone was less conciliatory. She was remonstrating.

  She rang off, walked to the fridge, grabbed two more VBs. ‘Thai water police.’ She shook her head. ‘A bloody worry.’

  When she sat down again Mac said, ‘What about the Philippines?

  Manila? Anything out of there?’

  Jen looked at the ceiling. ‘There was something I read today in a circular. Didn’t look like my go.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Heist. Container. Whole shipment lost, unaccounted for.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Containers go missing all the time. They’re not supposed to. Not after the Yanks went and spent all that money on the tracking protocols.

  But stuff goes missing. They’re ports, and people work at ports.’

  Mac looked at her. ‘So why was it circularised?’

  Jenny shrugged.

  ‘I mean, what was in it? Where was it going?’

  Jen stood, walked to the phone.

  Mac piped up, ‘Umm, not a good idea.’

  She clocked his embarrassed tone, did a double take. ‘Fuck, Mac. You people are too much! I’m a fucking federal cop! A senior federal cop!’

  Mac looked away. It’d be good to be civvie again – weird, but good.

  Jenny walked to the kitchen area, shaking her head. Pulled a Nokia out of a charger, made to turn it on. ‘I’m one of the good guys

  – remember that part?’

  Mac looked over, scratched the back of his head. ‘Uh, yeah… You got a personal one?’

  Jenny shook her head, rolled her eyes like Are you people for real?

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Mac. ‘You got a non-Commonwealth phone?’

  Now Jen had her hand on her hip, giving him the evils. Giving him the ice queen. Slight tooth-grinding motion in the mouth, she slowly shook her head.

  Mac pulled out the cheapo pre-paid. ‘This should do.’

  Jen stayed where she was. Mac had to get off the sofa, walk to her, pick up her hand and put the phone in it. Close the hand around it. She didn’t take her eyes off his face. Not hate – another thing, like his sister Virginia used to give him. Like the time he had to deal with the bloke who’d been grabbing her on the dance fl oor of a footy club bash, lifting her dress up and that sort of carry-on. Had asked the bloke to stop it which turned into Mac having to give the bloke a little something to go on with. Didn’t help that the drunken groper was Ginny’s boyfriend.

  Mac and Jen stared at each other for thirty seconds. Mac needed this. Jenny didn’t.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  Jen looked down at the phone, mumbled something, shook her head and dialled AFP, Manila.

  Mac had once vowed he wasn’t going to foul his own nest. That whatever he was asked to do, it wouldn’t involve mixing his personal life with his professional. The Service encouraged people to observe those limits. It was why you didn’t tell friends and family where you worked. When he started out Mac had imagined that the issue would be more to do with something that Frank was investigating that Mac would be asked to whitewash. But it had come down to another cop in his life: Jen. He’d just stepped over his line and he felt sick about it.

  Jen came back to the sofa, sat down and put a white pad on her lap. ‘My guy says it was an unmarked ro-ro container ship, shipping for San Francisco.’

  ‘Ro what?’

  Jen shrugged, used to the lingo. ‘You know – roll-on/roll-off.’

  ‘Unmarked? You mean no name?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Believe that?’

  ‘Just telling you what he said.’

  Mac thought about it: unmarked or non-commercial ships were usually military, government.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Not much else. When the alarm went out the whole place was swarming with US Army. A section’s been shut down. Media blackout.

  Local cops on the outer. There was a bunch of blokes with bio-hazards on – not that unusual.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Yeah, but there are spills all the time at container terminals and you never quite know what’s leaking. They send them out in the suits and breathers just to be sure.’

  ‘US Army is normal?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Does your guy know what’s in it?’

  ‘Nah – it’s hush-hush.’

  ‘Hushed up?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Come on, Jen.’

  She looked at him like she might be going too far.

  ‘Okay. Gary was in Bangkok a couple of years ago, at a maritime security symposium – one of those events that the British put on.

  Turns out one of the guys who gave a paper at the symposium is running the show at the Manila thing.’

  ‘Know who he is?’

  ‘Gary couldn’t be sure, but he was ninety per cent certain the guy was DIA.’ Jenny shrugged. Threw the pad aside.

  The evening was over. Mac made a promise to himself; that he would make it up to Jen. She’d recovered from her annoyance, but Mac knew there were other things she wanted to discuss, possibly even the future and commitment. It might have been. Before Diane.

  ‘By the way, Jen,’ he said,
stepping to the front door, ‘you don’t think I’m racist, do you?’

  Jenny thought about that, and said, ‘No. No I don’t.’

  They stared at one another, Jen imploring him with her beautiful dark eyes. Mac knew what she wanted. She wanted him to unload, talk about stuff like fear and regret. But he couldn’t. He felt blocked up, like he had a piece of concrete in his throat. As her eyes softened, his were getting harder – she reached out, he defended. He wanted to tell her he had another bird but he didn’t know how to say it.

  So he said, ‘Thanks, mate,’ and did the Harold.

  Jen shifted her weight. Both hands in the back pockets of her Levis.

  He saw her staring at the ceiling as he slipped out. A proud girl.

  I don’t cry, understand?

  Mac took the third cab that stopped. He trusted too-easy cabs like he trusted fi sh and chips in Alice Springs. He went north to the retail district in downtown.

  The DIA connection was odd. The Defense Intelligence Agency was a super-group connecting all the military intelligence outfi ts of the Pentagon into one collection and counterintelligence bureau. It was extremely powerful and operated in a far less publicly accountable way than the CIA. Globally connected, it had at its heart one of the most powerful networks of any intel organisation, with 1.4 million defence personnel who could become agents, co-optees and sources at any time. It could use more than seven hundred bases and facilities in forty countries. What was a DIA guy doing shutting down a section of Manila’s container terminal? What was in the missing container?

  It spelled ‘United States military’ and Mac knew only one person under that heading who he could call right now: John Sawtell.

  Mac got on the cheapo phone, called DC and got a listing for Camp Enduring Freedom in Zam. He mumbled the number to himself as he dialled, wondering if one of these days his knack for short-term recall of numbers and names was going to evaporate. You only got it with practice.

  The switch came on the line. Mac asked for Captain John Sawtell -

  US Army Special Forces. After Mac didn’t settle for ‘not available’, the bloke said Sawtell was in the mess. The bloke asked for a contact number and Mac said he’d try back soon.

  They got to downtown in twenty-one minutes. It was eight-thirty pm and still somehow the rush hour. Mac got out of the cab with the mail centre bag, walked fast through a large shopping mall and came out the other side, on a whole new block. There was a big cab rank out the front of the mall – lots of Vientas lined up waiting for shoppers, lots of drivers in white trop shirts, black chinos and plastic sandals, leaning on hoods, smoking, talking on mobiles, shooting the shit.

  Mac walked the line, the bag under his arm. He was looking for someone in his mid thirties, someone with overheads and middle-class aspirations. Someone with kids.

  Someone with shoes.

  He focused on one guy, about fi ve-eight, oval face, sensitive expression and a full head of black hair. He was groomed, no sandals and there was a dark blazer hanging against the inside right door. The guy had pride and his cab looked clean.

  Mac stopped, gave the bloke a wink. ”Zit going, champ?’

  The driver was all smiles.

  Mac sat up front, had a natter with him. His name was Rami, which in Indonesia could have been his fi rst name, a contraction of his surname, a family nickname from childhood or a name given to him by his local religious teacher when he came of age. You never quite knew in Indonesia. The bloke could have gone his entire life being known simply as Rami and that would not have been considered strange or unhelpful in the archipelago.

  Rami was trying to fi nish an IT qualifi cation at a local technology college, but he had to drive a cab to fi nd the money and that meant studying part-time. Which slowed the whole middle-class dream to a crawl. Rami shrugged. What could you do? Couldn’t ask your wife to work when she had two kids.

  ‘Maybe we can help each other out,’ said Mac.

  Rami dropped Mac in an area four blocks south of the British Embassy residential compound. Mac got out, looked around, walked to the rear of the Vienta. Rami joined him. He opened the boot. Mac put his plastic bag with the ovies, MPS key and Heckler in the trunk, jamming it behind the back seat so it didn’t slide around.

  Rami shut the boot lid. Mac put a hundred-dollar greenback in the breast pocket of Rami’s white trop shirt, held two more US hundred-dollar notes up in front of the cabbie’s disbelieving face.

  ‘Here’s the deal, champ. Six o’clock, on this corner, tomorrow morning. You get the rest of the money. Sound fair?’ Mac winked.

  ‘And no one touch the bag,’ said Rami, underlining it with a stern Javanese shake of the head.

  Mac had no choice but to trust him. He didn’t feel entirely safe without the Heckler but he was close to making something happen with Diane and he wasn’t about to blow it by trying to smuggle a handgun into the British Embassy compound.

  He walked the remaining blocks, crossed the street, stopped and looked in window refl ections. Stalked the few cars allowed to park around the embassies, looking for eyes. Around this area of south Jakarta your average punter couldn’t just park and have a nosey-poke.

  Anyone on the streets would be diplomatic, intelligence, cops.

  He doubled back and presented himself at one of the glass-cage gatehouses that had sprung up all over South-East Asia in the past fi ve years.

  ‘Richard Davis. For Diane Ellison. Thanks, champion.’

  CHAPTER 19

  Mac waited by the gatehouse in early evening heat. The sky was orange-red – a tropical barn-burner of a sunset. Behind the bullet-proof glass a big Anglo was looking over the shoulder of the local guard, checking out Mac’s passport. The big bloke looked up at Mac’s face, looked back, leaned further over the guard’s shoulder, fl ipped at the passport and looked up again.

  Mac winked. ‘Look better with the goldilocks, huh?’

  The mo was in the container, the contacts were in the jar but his hair was still black.

  The big Anglo was expressionless.

  Mac had him as former HM Customs, intel section – big, beefy, red-faced sort of bloke who clocked faces like he was a biometrics computer. It had been a long day and the last thing Mac needed was some customs robot getting in his face about where he’d been and what he’d been up to. Just some old chat, maybe throwing in one of their trick asides about swimming at a Darwin beach or the famous train journey from Madras to Chennai. Mac had had his hairy moments in many airports with blokes just like old Beefy here, and he didn’t have the ticker for it after the kind of forty-eight hours he’d just been through.

  Beefy smiled, said, ‘No luggage, Mr Davis. Not intending on staying?’

  ‘That depends on her ladyship, champ. She might get lucky.’

  Beefy snorted, smiled, slipped the passport back under the glass.

  Mac gave him the wink and giddy-up. Beefy stepped away from the bullet-proof screen, shaking his head slightly, keyed the radio hand-piece on his left shoulder, mouthed something. Came back, fl ipped his head to the right. The pedestrian gate slid straight back into the gatehouse. Mac said, ‘Thanks, lads,’ and walked into the residential compound of the British Embassy. Just another Aussie sales dickhead with a thing for tall blondes.

  He didn’t have to wait long, only about ninety seconds before a sapphire-blue Jag came around a corner between a stand of topiary.

  Mac went to get in the front, by habit, then realised Diane was in the back. He slid onto leather, into air-con, smiling at the fi gment of his marriage fantasies.

  ”Zit going? All right?’

  ‘Ooh, the hair, Richard! I love it!’ she said.

  Mac felt the car surging forward as he was pulled down into a kiss. He felt Diane’s breath blowing out of her nostrils like plumes of desire and he got his arms around her waist. She shifted her mouth to his jaw and then his left ear, which tickled.

  ‘God it’s good to see you again,’ she whispered, then kissed him on the
mouth, slipped her right hand down to his bicep, sinking her talons into it.

  Mac fi nally came up for air. They were driving what he reckoned was north. He pushed his hair back, thinking, Do I have enough Brut on?

  Is she going to get black dye all over her hands? Is it kinky if another bloke’s sitting two feet away?

  Mac sat back, took her in. She was smiling, pale eyes sparkling in a strong, oval face. Intelligent and not cowed. She fi lled out her sky-blue linen dress, which came to just above the knee. Black shoes with a single strap, cute little gold watch on tanned skin. Mac was used to birds in Levis and runners, boardies and tank tops. Diane was a whole other level.

  ‘Where we going?’ he asked.

  ‘Sunda Kelapa – that fi sh place we got trashed at once.’ Diane said it with an air of smiling collusion, as if her world was made of two people and Mac was one of them.

  Sunda Kelapa was the original fi shing village Jakarta had been built around. It was still used for fi shing and was probably the only part of Jakkers where you’d see a man in a sarung who wasn’t hamming for a tourist photo. It was old-school Jakarta and after dark there was a chance of being mugged. Mac let it go. He wanted one night of non-paranoia. He’d leave the worrying to the driver, who seemed to know what he was doing.

  He was back with Diane, as if Sydney hadn’t happened. He was giddy, intoxicated with it all, in love.

  They ate up large: curried crab, salty fi sh, prawns in the banana skins, buckets of goreng. The whole Javanese bit. Being back in Jakkers seemed to have a calming infl uence on both of them. In Sydney, Diane’s personality had brought out a chip on Mac’s shoulder, a nagging sense that he may not be good enough for a diplomat’s daughter. The morning that had started with the interview at the University of Sydney, and included being tailed, and ended with that awkward lunch, was really just the climax of a lot of worries that Mac had been feeling in Sydney. The fear of not being able – or allowed – to make the shift to civvie life. Or the deep-seated suspicion that perhaps some people just weren’t equipped to have wives, mortgages and fi nancial planners. There was also the loss of control, the ebbing away of his carefully crafted internal walls and walls within walls. He knew it was happening and he blamed Diane for how weak it made him feel.