Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent

by Mark Abernethy

  Now Garrison had inveigled himself into the Australian China Desk, the Hannah bird was missing and their last known sighting was a place Mac had vowed to never visit again.

  The morning fl ight was landing them in Sulawesi - land of a thousand nightmares.

  CHAPTER 5

  Frank McQueen left nothing but shadow in his wake: rugby league star, North Queensland’s top detective and veteran of the Vietnam War.

  When cattle-stealing season came around, all the young detectives put up their hands for Frank’s expeditions into the interior. Mac grew up poring over the newspapers with his sister Virginia, looking for the inevitable photograph of their dad dragging a couple of ringbarked bumpkins into the lock-up.

  When Mac won a sports scholarship to Nudgee College in Brisbane, Frank gulped down some big ones. That was until he realised that the pride of Queensland Catholic education preferred rugby over rugby league. Frank regularly captained Country Police in their annual rugby league stoush with the Brisbane Cops and Frank didn’t like the idea of his son going to Nudgee to play a sport he declared was only for

  ‘wankers or ponies’.

  Mac spent his privileged education smarting under the sneers of his father. Even making Queensland Schoolboys in his senior year couldn’t turn it. Everything hinged on Mac going into the Queensland cops and getting an armchair ride through the Ds as Frank’s Son.

  The day he phoned his mother and told her he’d taken a job with a textbook company, his mum actually groaned. He didn’t tell her he was going to be a spook. Wasn’t allowed. Didn’t know that the fi b he told her would be a lifelong habit.

  Frank got on the line, asked Mac a couple of questions and fi gured it pretty quick. ‘Don’t tell me, this place is in Canberra and Jakarta, right?’ Frank upgraded his insult about rugby players. ‘Intel people,’

  said Frank, who was infantry in Vietnam, ‘are wankers and ponies.’

  Which was what Mac was thinking about as he strode in a crowd across the sticky hot tarmac of Makassar’s Hasanuddin Airport, carrying a black suit bag over his shoulder, a black wheelie bag trailing behind.

  In order to get the salesman cover going he wore a short-sleeved beige safari suit, Italian brown woven shoes and a pair of Porsche sunnies. His thin blond hair was gelled straight back and he had a thick gold chain at his neck. The tan was real but it could easily pass for one of those indoor jobs. It was the salesman look he affected for travelling as Richard Davis from Southern Scholastic Books.

  If Frank saw his son like this, Mac’s cover would be secure. Frank would ignore him. Stone cold motherless.

  Just after ten in the morning and the pilot had warned them that it was already thirty-eight degrees at the airport. To the south, massive cloud formations rose thousands of storeys into the air - black, blue and purple and staring down over the tropical sauna of southern Sulawesi.

  There was no wind: the very air strained under the weight of what Mac reckoned was ninety-eight per cent humidity.

  Mac glanced back at the Lion Air 737 cooling its wings behind him. Garuda was a nest of spies and informers during Suharto’s era, and no one in the intelligence community had trusted it since. Still, the Lion fl ight was comfortable, unlike what Sawtell and his boys would be going through: Jakarta to Balikpapan by helo and then a C-130

  fl ight into Watampone across the peninsula from Makassar. It would look like a military milk run. No fl ags, no Chinese nosey-pokes.

  The cabbie who drove him to the Pantai Gapura was understanding about Mac’s requests for a few detours here and there. There was no tail, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be. He got the room he wanted at the Pantai, 521, overlooking the pool bar. There were no balconies looking down on his room and there was only one other door on the fl oor. He checked with reception: no bookings in 522.

  He threw his suitcase on the bed and opened it: a few loose clothes and samples. The samples were real: history, geography and mathematics high school textbooks in Bahasa. He took a blue Nokia from the bag and made a call to a number in Canberra which was routed through Singapore and into the government/military secured section of the Telstra cellular system in Australia. He confi rmed arrival and good health with his weekly logs.

  Shortly before midday he opened the sliding doors onto the patio and clocked the sprawling resort with bungalows scattered amidst stands of old palms and saltwater pools. Nothing untoward, just screaming Malaysian kids in the pool and nagging parents trying to get them to swim in the shallow end.

  Mac rubbed his eyes. He was tired, needed sleep. In two days he’d RV with Sawtell’s team and he’d need a lot of energy in the saddlebags.

  Mac re-entered the room, locked the balcony door and swept the main bugging points: phone, TV, coffee table, under the bed, mattress, the lamps.

  Nothing.

  He found a box of matches and tested the mirrors for two-way vision. They looked okay but naked fl ame was not foolproof.

  Running the shower hard he positioned himself behind the main door, where he could also see out to the patio. If the Chinese or Indons wanted to move on him, they’d do it while he was showering. Most business hotels in Indonesia were bugged, some of them for video. If he’d missed a comms point, this should fl ush them out.

  He waited fi ve, seven, ten minutes.

  Steam wafted into the room.

  Nothing.

  Ringing down to reception, he complained that the bed was broken. Told the girl he was going out for an hour and wanted it fi xed before he returned.

  He hung up before the receptionist could confi rm and let himself into the corridor. Shutting the door he moved to the other end of the landing area, beyond the elevator doors and behind a planter box of indoor palms. He stood still, casual and humming to himself. Just some halfwit Anglo with a game of pocket billiards going on.

  Five minutes. Ten minutes.

  At fi fteen minutes Mac moved back to the room. If management were in on something, they would have had a spook up the stairs within two minutes to work over his room. The hotel was clean. This shift, at least.

  Mac phoned reception again, told the girl not to worry about the bed. He secured the doors, grabbed a cold Bintang from the bar fridge, opened it and put it on the writing table where he watched it sweat. Then he stripped to his briefs, did fi fty push-ups and four sets of fi fteen ab crunches. He shadow boxed up on his toes for six minutes and rewarded himself with the beer.

  He pulled the curtains and got into bed. Fatigue raced up on him and his brain swam: he thought of Diane, and what it would take. He thought of the Sydney Uni job and what he’d need to do to keep it on track. The Garvey briefi ng in Jakkers gnawed at him too. Judith Hannah was last seen - or not seen, depending on the quality of the intelligence

  - in Makassar, capital of south Sulawesi. With Garrison. Allegedly.

  What annoyed Mac was how quickly Garrison had become the focus. Even Sawtell, the Green Beret, had assumed the mission was a hit on Garrison. Then there was Dave Urquhart. Urquhart, the political liaison guy, the fi xer of ulterior motives between the executive arm of government and Australia’s spies. Where there was Urquhart, there was politics. Which meant some poor operational bastard was going to get screwed.

  One guess.

  Sleep crept up on him and he got a glimpse of the time he’d been wandering around The Rocks in Sydney with Diane. They’d drunk too much at dinner and were snogging under a restaurant awning while they waited for a rain storm to pass. A couple had come past, the bloke in a suit and his woman following behind. They’d obviously been fi ghting because the suit was withholding his umbrella. Diane saw it and reacted immediately. Yelled out, ‘Give her your brollie, you selfi sh wanker!’

  The bloke stopped and the woman moved under the brollie.

  The woman had turned and mouthed thank you at Diane over her shoulder.

  That’s what Mac had fallen for. A real piece of work.

  Mac woke. It was dark. His civvie Omega on the bedside table
said it was 3.11. He dressed in a polo shirt and rugby shorts. Dragged the top sheet from the bed, stuffed it under his arm. Pulled on a black baseball cap and dark sunnies and made for reception.

  There was one person behind the desk. A young Indon with a bum-fl uff mo. He was sleeping.

  Mac bird-whistled and the guy woke with a start.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, champ. Forgot to get something from my security box.’

  The desk guy slapped his pockets as he stood, eyed Mac’s bare feet, cap and sunnies.

  Mac winked, friendly: ‘ Maaate. The lights in this place.’

  Just another crazy Skippy loose in the tropics.

  The desk guy buttoned up his organ-grinder monkey suit, did a quick ID check of Mac’s passport and then led the way through a door behind the reception desk. They walked along a dimly lit corridor, down two fl ights of stairs and into the basement security box area where the desk guy unlocked a thick steel door. Fluorescent lights fl ickered to life overhead as they entered. It was about twenty metres long, fi ve metres wide and lined fl oor to ceiling with heavy brushed-steel lock boxes. There was a footstand at the far end, sitting on the taupe lino, near a table with two chairs.

  The hotel was fi nanced with Singapore-Chinese money and one of the fi rst things they must have designed was the safe deposit area.

  Mac could feel the surveillance camera on the back of his neck.

  The bloke turned, questioning eyes. Mac held up his red plastic key ring with the number 92 on it. The desk guy moved down to 92, looking for a key on his chain. The boxes between 90 and 100 were painted black, the long-term hires that required both the client’s key and the hotel’s master.

  They both put their keys into the medium-sized door and turned.

  A brushed-steel enclosed tray lay inside. It was the size of four shoe boxes.

  The desk guy stared at it.

  Mac stared at the desk guy. ‘Thanks, champ - think I’ve got it now.’

  The desk guy smiled. Fucked off.

  Mac whipped the sheet over his head so it draped over his security box and down to his ankles. He pulled out the tray and opened the lid.

  Bundles of US, Australian, Malaysian and Indonesian currency winked back through a seal-lock plastic bag the size of a decent cushion. It was all used notes, perhaps US$40,000 worth in total.

  Mac riffl ed the rupiah, peeled off about US$5000. Trousered it, then resealed the money bag and dug around under it. There was a pile of Amex and Visa cards in various names, held together with a rubber band. There were also passports, drivers’ licences, a digital camera, a BlackBerry and a red Nokia that had seen better days. There were two handguns - a Heckler & Koch P9S with a black plastic stock grip, and an American-made Walther PPK .38 - both holstered in navy blue hip rigs. Mac had never used the Walther.

  There were four empty clips and several boxes of Winchester .45s and .38s. He couldn’t remember how much ammo each contained.

  He grabbed the Heckler, two clips and three boxes of .45s.

  Mac slipped the sheet off his shoulders. Turned it into a swag and put his booty in it. Then he left, walking backwards.

  CHAPTER 6

  Showered and made up like a sales dickhead, Mac ate up large for breakfast: bacon, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, toast, tea, orange juice and half a rockmelon. He was hunkered down in a corner of the Pantai’s huge tropical-themed restaurant, so he’d get a look at the whole room and everyone in it. He was surrounded by Anglo expats and Malaysians trying to cash in on the boom economy of Sulawesi.

  Shortly before eight am Mac was running through his day: he needed extra phones, he needed a car - and maybe a driver - and he needed to get on the Garrison/Hannah trail. The Service didn’t have employees or assets in Sulawesi. But they had Minky Bonuya, a local contractor primarily run by the CIA and a hub of the best intelligence on Sulawesi. His long, vulpine face was a real standout in round-faced Indonesia, and Mac wasn’t a great fan of the bloke. But Minky was allegedly the one with the Garrison drum.

  As he left the restaurant, Mac walked past a tourist at a fruit stand.

  She smelled of the soap that Diane used. Crabtree and Something.

  It annoyed him at fi rst but he fell into daydreaming about perhaps travelling with Diane, when he wasn’t working, when he was a regular university lecturer. When …

  He snapped out of it. Gave himself a quick tap on the head with the middle knuckle. Thirty-seven years old, and in love for the fi rst time. He didn’t know how people did it.

  Minky’s shoe shop was two blocks inland from the Makassar port area. Mac did a fi gure of eight around it, then did some overruns, double-backs and triangulated patterns, with his black wheelie case in tow. Just an overworked salesman looking for his clients. Only this salesman had a P9S handgun sitting slightly behind the front point of his right hip bone, hidden from sight by a safari suit jacket.

  Mac wasn’t big on guns, which was why he hadn’t even practised with the Walther yet. Didn’t read the magazines, didn’t have an emotional attachment to them. He had grown to like the unfashionable Heckler for practical reasons. At four inches, its barrel was nice and short, and it was lighter than the big semi-autos like the Beretta and Glock. Sure, it only had seven shots in the clip, but that meant it used a single-stack mag rather than the jam-prone double stacks. It also made it lighter and thinner, perfect for a hip rig. Banger Jordan had hated the shoulder rigs for their record of accidental shootings. He used to say that if he heard about any of his candidates using shoulder holsters in their careers, he’d come over and personally kick their arses. ‘The most likely victim of the shoulder holster,’ he’d said, ‘is the poor cunt standing behind you - and he’s on your side.’

  The street looked okay. It was mid tourist season which meant more people to scope but also easier to spot eyes: people who were not relaxing. Some of the cars parked at the kerb - Toyota Vientas and Honda Accords mostly - had men sitting in them, but it wasn’t unlike an Australian shopping district, the missus shopping while blokes read the sports pages. One of the car-bound blokes even looked straight at him: hardly a professional’s technique.

  Mac pushed through the door of Minky’s shop into air-con dimness. Minky looked up from behind a glass counter. Smiled like a fox, lips parting to reveal big rodent teeth. Short and middle-aged, his hair was pushed back like an Asian Nosferatu.

  ‘Aha, Mr Mac - welcome,’ said Minky, coming around the counter in his white dentist’s coat. He shook Mac’s hand.

  ‘Minky. How’s business?’ said Mac. The smell of leather was good -

  a blast of childhood.

  ‘Oooh, so good, Mr Mac. So good.’

  This would go on for a while. It was the Indonesian way. Mac used the interlude to case the place: rows of shoes up and down the sides, glass counter at the end of the shop and a glass door into the back room where Mac knew Minky kept his safes and tricky comms gear, including a military satellite uplink-downlink.

  The last time Mac was in Sulawesi, Minky had helped him rescue a mining concession that a large Australian company had paid good bribe money to secure. It was being undermined by a bit of Chinese skulduggery and the resolution saw the Aussie mining company having to pony up more money to get what it had already paid for.

  Mac took it as a victory but he was always convinced that Minky had taken a cut of the extra fee. Real meaning: Minky had secretly foiled a number of Service-preferred solutions, such as blackmail, in favour of the cheque. After that gig Mac had promised himself that he wouldn’t return to this beautiful and brutal island. During the operation one of his Indon contacts had been hauled off to the cells at the Makassar POLRI compound and beaten virtually to death. Mac always suspected Minky of informing. He’d have done it to ensure he was the only local asset that the Americans and Australians would use. He’d have done it for money. That was Minky.

  Now they talked shit.

  ‘How are you, Mink?’

  ‘No, how are you, Mr Mac?’
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br />   And it was going on for just a shade too long. Mac started to get that cold thing in his gut. That thing when you’re fourteen years old and you cross the dance fl oor of the school formal to ask the girl to dance, and you get that block of ice in your solar plexus. About half a second before she says, ‘No thanks.’

  That feeling.

  He looked Minky in the eye. Rather than feeling warm towards the bloke, he saw him now as quarry. Minky clocked Mac’s eyes changing and stopped blathering. Gulped. Gear change into scared. Pale-eyed people were not universally well regarded in South-East Asia, mostly because pale eyes couldn’t hide their emotions in the manner required by a face-saving society. Especially violent emotions.

  There was a slight movement behind Minky. A tiny shift of refl ection in the half-open glass door. Mac whacked Minky in the Adam’s apple with a knife hand, grabbed the stunned mullet by the hair, pulled him backwards into his stomach and held his face still by wrapping his hand around the little guy’s mouth. Then he squeezed his thumb and forefi nger together on each side of Minky’s face, so he was making the sides of his mouth push inwards on his tongue.

  Minky’s eyes bulged, his small hands mincing at Mac’s paw and his legs thrashing.

  Mac kept the air fi lled with pleasant nothings as he suppressed any noise of resistance, making it sound as if they were still talking.

  Mink’s mouth gulped against the palm of his hand as he advanced slowly on the door to the back offi ce. Mac put his hand back, drew the Heckler.

  Minky convulsed, French-kissed Mac’s palm. The vibration of stifl ed scream microwaved Mac’s hand and he pinched Minky’s nostrils shut to stop him moaning. Minky spasmed and vomit cascaded through Mac’s fi ngers. It smelled like curried fi sh. With coriander.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mac over his shoulder, as they crept forward. ‘So if we went with the sirloins it wouldn’t be the same thing as if it were blue.