Double back am-3

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘And I guess Tony’s in Canberra, keeping an eye on your analysts, right?’ said Mac, trying to make it light but failing.

  Atkins gave Mac a death stare.

  ‘Alan’s been in the field for a while – tough time in East Timor,’ said Atkins, then held up a finger to Berquist. ‘One minute, Carl?’

  Turning to Mac, Atkins was white-lipped as he led Mac out of the room by the elbow.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, McQueen?!’ he hissed as they reached the water cooler in reception.

  ‘Me?!’ said Mac, furious. ‘What the fuck are you doing, Marty?’

  ‘I’m debriefing you on fucking Masquerade, McQueen. It’s what we do, mate!’

  The receptionist, a young Anglo woman, cleared her throat and disappeared through a door behind the desk.

  ‘See what you’ve done now?’ said Mac, aware that a couple of former footy players arguing might seem intimidating.

  ‘Grow up, Macca!’ said Atkins, as he straightened his tie.

  ‘I don’t need to be lectured on how debriefs work, Marty,’ said Mac, pointing at the meeting room door. ‘But we don’t debrief to the analysis and assessment people.’

  ‘Gee, sorry, Macca. Didn’t know you were making the rules for Aussie intelligence now.’

  ‘We do it the way we do it so I can say things to you informally that might not go into the CX.’

  ‘You think Carl can’t tell the difference?’ demanded Atkins, as furious as Mac. ‘He’s a director, Macca! He was spooking when you were in primary school.’

  ‘So they say, but Tony’s the relevant director,’ said Mac.

  ‘ Relevant?! ’ growled Atkins. ‘Try some relevant manners.’

  ‘ Me?! ’ snorted Mac, breathing shallow. ‘That’s rich.’

  ‘Yes, manners! You’re not going to come into my office and speak to the director of analysis like that, mate. Not how it works,’ said Atkins, his face red.

  Taking a breather, Mac and Atkins put their hands on their hips.

  ‘You could have told me, mate,’ said Mac, taking the edge off his voice. ‘Frankly, I would have liked some warning that I was going to be discussing Masquerade in front of someone like Carl Berquist.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Atkins.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mac, trying to push Atkins back to the meeting room.

  ‘No,’ said Atkins, shrugging off the hand. ‘What did you mean by that comment?’

  ‘Come on, Marty – Berquist is pure Jakarta Lobby.’

  ‘ What lobby?’ snapped Atkins.

  ‘You know, the ones who say there are no militias in East Timor, and if there are, they’re not connected to the military, and even if they are connected it’s a rogue element, but even if they’re not, they’re a calming influence on the violence, et cetera, et cetera

  …’

  ‘Oh, that lobby! You mean the people who want some kind of evidence of homicidal militias controlled and funded from Jakarta before we write reports that the Prime Minister is supposed to rely on? Is that the conspiracy we’re talking about?’

  ‘Marty – it’s a mess over there, mate. I wanted to debrief, just a couple of field guys talking it through.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, McQueen! Berquist was a field guy.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Mac goaded. ‘He had a few lunches in Beijing or Tokyo?’

  Sighing, Atkins shook his head. ‘I know you get stressed, okay? You get the worst gigs and it must be mentally tiring…’

  Mac nodded, needing air. Atkins was playing the stress leave card.

  ‘But not everyone’s out to get you, Macca,’ said Atkins. ‘So let’s go and do the debrief and show me what you’ve got.’

  Nodding again, Mac bit his bottom lip and turned towards the meeting room.

  ‘And Macca?’ said Atkins, lowering his voice. ‘Just so you know – he’s here on authority of the DG, okay?’

  ‘The DG?’ asked Mac, confused. ‘What, our DG?’

  ‘Yeah, mate – I think they want to retrieve you.’

  As he turned away, Mac managed a snigger at the intel-speak. But it didn’t matter what pseudo-American terminology they used, Atkins was saying the Director-General of the firm wanted him back in Canberra.

  CHAPTER 34

  By the time Mac was five minutes into his run-through, the meeting had become Berquist’s debrief, and every point Mac tried to make became an exercise in Canberra’s scepticism.

  ‘No, Carl, I have no evidence linking the death camp to Jakarta, except the bulldozer on the army truck,’ sighed Mac for the umpteenth time and sick of the questions framed for the listening posts. ‘It’s corroborated by third-party intel from a Falintil commander.’

  ‘The terrorists?’ said Berquist, his wandering eye starting to annoy Mac. ‘You had good reason to trust these terrorists? Their bona fides check out?’

  ‘Let’s just call them Falintil, okay, Carl?’ said Mac, refusing to be baited. ‘They got word of a refugee camp for the villagers moved out of the south coast – a camp that no one seemed to return from.’

  ‘We confirmed this?’

  ‘They took me to the camp,’ said Mac. ‘I sighted as many as a hundred and thirty bodies.’

  ‘But we didn’t confirm that this was the camp?’

  ‘Falintil identified it.’

  ‘What about the identity of this Antoine, Ant -’

  ‘Antonio? No, I didn’t confirm his ID but I sighted the camp and the bodies and the bulldozer was on an army truck and the intel spooks escorting it were -’

  ‘We know who ran the camp?’ interrupted Berquist.

  ‘Antonio was a soldier in the local regiment, the 1635, and he was ordered -’

  ‘But we didn’t confirm who Antonio was, or if he even exists?’ asked Berquist.

  Mac felt physically exhausted and overwhelmed by Berquist’s relentless style. Worst of all, Berquist may have been right: all Mac had was a visit to what he thought was a death camp, a run-in with some Kopassus spooks and a bulldozer driver. The only evidence for Antonio’s identity was the say-so of a guerrilla commander.

  ‘You’re right, Carl,’ said Mac, beaten.

  ‘You obviously saw a lot of corpses at that camp,’ said Berquist. ‘And it’s affected you. But that doesn’t mean foul play, does it? Perhaps they were sick?’ He turned to Atkins, who nodded.

  ‘Here’s another scenario,’ said Berquist. ‘The militias clear some villages on the south coast, the refugees are walking west and they catch, say, typhoid, and the Indonesians try to quarantine them in a remote camp.’

  Remembering Davidson’s warning to do the debrief in a friendly manner, Mac shifted the focus of the conversation.

  ‘I’ve told you about the Lombok AgriCorp facility, Carl. What do you make of that?’ said Mac.

  ‘Could be legitimate, yet confidential,’ said the director of analysis. ‘Most armies have R amp;D programs. The Australian Army spent years trying to develop counter-malaria medicines, all of it hush-hush.’

  ‘So why is Lombok such a secret?’ asked Mac, genuinely interested.

  ‘Maybe they don’t want nosey Aussie spies finding out what they’re doing. Our own CSIRO is all security-vetted now,’ said Berquist, referring to Australia’s scientific research agency. ‘You have to go through ASIO to work there.’

  ‘Something’s going on up there,’ said Mac. ‘Yarrow was procuring for Lombok AgriCorp and he was associated with the bag-man for the North Korean Army’s heroin business.’

  ‘But you didn’t bring the procurement list?’ asked Berquist, already aware that Mac had lost it when he was caught.

  ‘No, Carl,’ said Mac.

  ‘No Blackbird? No Canadian?’ asked Berquist, his voice clear and neutral.

  ‘No, Carl – and no fingerprints, no confessions, no smoking gun,’ said Mac, before a sudden insight made him sit up straight. Mac remembered the vial he’d grabbed from Damajat’s office. It had gone in a consular pouch from Dar
win to the US Defense Department’s lab contractors in Denpasar, and the return address was the building they were sitting in.

  ‘The vial,’ said Mac, clicking his fingers. ‘I grabbed a vial from Lombok AgriCorp – from Damajat’s office. It should be here.’

  ‘It is,’ said Atkins, producing a bubble-wrapped courier bag and sliding the vial onto the table.

  ‘Well?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Trial vaccine,’ said Atkins, pulling a letter from the bag and flipping pages over. ‘The lab says it’s a vaccine for something like a, what’s it called? Here it is – a community-acquired MRSA. A powerful pneumonia, apparently.’

  ‘Vaccine?’ said Mac, reaching for the letter.

  ‘It gets better,’ said Atkins, pointing at the pages in Mac’s hands. ‘All of these vaccine programs – if they’re legitimate – have their own ID number, a sort of registration with the World Health Organization. It’s all on a database, mate, and Lombok AgriCorp has one.’

  ‘Shit, Marty,’ said Mac, heart not in it. ‘We’ve got North Korean drug dealers and people like the Sudarto brothers connected with this, and we’re supposed to believe it’s a vaccine?’

  ‘We?’ asked Atkins, deadpan.

  Mac glared at Atkins for a solid seven seconds, then broke it and looked down at the letter and spectral analysis from the American lab. Berquist and Atkins had played him perfectly. He was so tired, so upset by what he’d seen in East Timor, that he wasn’t entirely sure where the facts stopped and supposition took over.

  ‘I guess I should tell you why I’m here,’ said Berquist. ‘DG sent me up to retrieve you, Alan.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, there was a formal complaint lodged by the Republic of Indonesia,’ he said, pulling a black-covered dossier from his briefcase and opening it. ‘They cited a theft from their vaccine program, an attack on an army garrison at Maliana resulting in seven Indonesian deaths. They’ve implicated you in the bombing of a fuel store in which two buildings were razed and three army staff cars written off.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mac.

  ‘There was also the assassination of two Indonesian army officers and two army personnel at an unspecified location outside of Memo, and the execution of four Indonesian soldiers at a checkpoint between Balibo and Batugade.’

  ‘The streets aren’t safe anymore,’ quipped Mac.

  ‘This isn’t a joke, McQueen!’ snapped Berquist. ‘East Timor is sovereign territory – it’s Indonesia! Our friends and neighbours, mate!’

  ‘I know,’ sighed Mac.

  ‘This job isn’t a licence to go playing Rambo, okay?’ said Berquist. ‘I thought that had been spelled out after the Lok Kok debrief.’

  Mac looked at his hands.

  ‘The frigging diplomats were running round Canberra all day yesterday trying to pin this on us, and they’ve succeeded,’ said Berquist, referring to the fact that Australia’s SIS shared the same corporate stable with the diplomatic corps from Foreign Affairs.

  ‘It’s what they do,’ said Mac.

  ‘And our thoughtful Javanese neighbours included a bill,’ said Berquist, holding up a page of figures to Mac. ‘Three hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars – US – for one military heavy road transporter and one D6 bulldozer that they found at the bottom of a gorge on the road to Balibo.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘There’s a bill for the fuel and cars, a draft note to the UN, given that we’re so involved in the promotion of free and fair elections in East Timor. Oh, and you might like to see these,’ he added, pushing several black-and-whites across the conference table.

  Mac saw a still of himself bending over the tray in Damajat’s locked cabinet and a time-series of Bongo, walking across an open area with a G3 in his hands, fire spewing from the barrel.

  Mac shrugged. ‘Busy night.’

  ‘The Indonesians have identified one Alphonse Morales as the man in those pictures,’ said Berquist. ‘They say he was working with an Australian claiming to be Richard Davis, but who is known to their intelligence as an undeclared ASIS officer, previously associated with embassies in Jakarta, Manila and Singapore.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mac.

  A knock sounded at the door and the receptionist stuck her head in, looked at Atkins and mouthed the words, Tony Davidson.

  ‘I’ll call him back,’ said Atkins.

  ‘He’s at the front desk,’ whispered the girl, with a sense of drama, before slipping back out and closing the door.

  Face darkening, Atkins stood, not sure who to look at. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, smiling without conviction.

  ‘Whatever happens here today, mate, there’s a way back, okay?’ said Berquist suddenly.

  ‘Really?’ said Mac.

  ‘And by the way, it wasn’t Beijing – it was Shanghai.’

  Embarrassed at being overheard, Mac nodded. ‘Look, I -’

  ‘And it wasn’t lunch, ’less you count a few nights with the MSS as eating.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ sighed Mac, feeling stupid. The MSS – China’s CIA – had a fearsome reputation for their interrogations.

  ‘It’s a funny distinction we make between the office guys and the field guys – I used to make that distinction too.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Mac.

  ‘The Chinese took my eye,’ he smiled, pointing at his tricky peeper. ‘And I couldn’t do it anymore – nerves went, mate.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mac.

  ‘Talking about office guys, can you guess who my controller was for that gig?’ asked Berquist with a big smile.

  ‘Who?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Same bloke who’s out there trying to extract you from this long-drop,’ chuckled Berquist. ‘It’s just business, okay?’

  Taking the offered hand, Mac sat back, humbled.

  The door opened and Atkins strolled in slowly, reading a letter. Behind him, Tony Davidson filled the door, all smiles.

  ‘Carl!’ he said, advancing and shaking Berquist’s hand. ‘Nice to see you here.’

  ‘Nice to see you too, Tony,’ said Berquist. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘McQueen’s been seconded to the Yanks – hush-hush,’ said Davidson.

  ‘Nice idea but bad timing, Tony,’ said Berquist, friendly. ‘I’m here to retrieve McQueen.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ asked Davidson. ‘Whose authority?’

  ‘DG’s, I’m afraid,’ said Berquist, pulling a letter from his briefcase and slapping it on the table.

  ‘Better look at this, Carl,’ said Atkins, sliding his own letter across to Berquist, who had the grace to smile as he read it.

  ‘Congratulations, Alan,’ said Berquist, forcing a grin as he looked up. ‘You’ve been bailed out by the Minister for Foreign Affairs.’

  CHAPTER 35

  Mac ordered the Golden Lantern’s famous duck and a couple of beers, then sat back.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Davidson, examining Mac’s face.

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Mac, sipping at a cold beer while the throng of Denpasar passed on the street. ‘But I’m okay.’

  ‘You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Sure, Tony,’ said Mac, well aware that, in the intelligence game, emotional or psychological problems were an express lane to a desk job.

  ‘Okay,’ said Davidson, casing the restaurant, ‘get some rest and you’ll be contacted by your new controller tomorrow.’

  ‘We know who?’

  ‘Yep. Jim, from DIA,’ said Davidson.

  ‘Why the Yanks?’ asked Mac, thinking back to his chat with Jim in Darwin.

  ‘They’ve been on Bill Yarrow for a while, as I understand,’ said Davidson. ‘They don’t like the company he keeps. Now they hear an Aussie officer’s been in this, um, facility…’

  ‘Lombok AgriCorp?’

  ‘That’s the one – it’s of interest to the Pentagon.’

  ‘Why?’

  Davidson took a swig of his beer. ‘When was the last time anyone from DIA spoke to you in a fu
ll sentence?’

  ‘Probably the last time I saw rocking-horse manure,’ said Mac.

  ‘Done any work on our presidential problem?’ asked Davidson, lowering his voice.

  ‘I haven’t been able to find Rahmid’s controller,’ said Mac. ‘Although I think he was working out of a front in KL.’

  Unfolding his hotel stationery, Mac gave Davidson the phone numbers and addresses of Penang Trading and Andromeda IT, which Davidson jotted on his detective’s pad.

  ‘The controller is going to be difficult,’ said Mac, ‘but I think we’ve found who Rahmid was running as an agent in Dili.’

  As Davidson went to write the name and address on his pad, he stopped and looked up at Mac. ‘That’s PT Watu Selatan,’ he said, looking around the restaurant. ‘That’s a company set up by Soeharto’s generals!’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Mac.

  ‘Good work, mate,’ said Davidson. ‘But it’s still hush-hush, okay?’

  ‘Sure, Tony. Are we going to approach this guy?’

  ‘We have to,’ said Davidson.

  ‘Be careful who you send,’ warned Mac.

  ‘Careful doesn’t come close,’ said Davidson.

  Watching the All-Star baseball game on the big screen, Mac washed down shots of Bundaberg rum with cold Bintangs at the Bar Barong, a few blocks from Puputan Square. American commentators screamed about what Mark McGwire was doing wrong and what Sammy Sosa wasn’t doing at all as Mac lounged on his stool.

  On the bar in front of him sat a small white envelope that Jessica had slipped into his wheelie bag at Larrakeyah. It said Richard on the front, in blue ballpoint, and had a small heart beside it. He’d avoided opening it, not wanting to get mired in distractions. The letter would either profess a love he couldn’t return or it would make him feel bad about her father, as if he and Bongo hadn’t done enough. And maybe they hadn’t. Mac had withheld information about Bill Yarrow’s whereabouts and, as much as he could justify it, he didn’t feel good about it.

  ‘Another, mister?’ asked the barman.

  Mac nodded, dropping the rupiah on the wooden counter as the commentators turned their hysteria to Ken Griffey’s ability to hit the advertising hoardings at the back of Fenway Park.