Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent

by Mark Abernethy

  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.

  Maybe it was just the age-old worry, that he’d ask the girl to marry him, and she’d laugh, say something like, You? Why would I marry you?!

  All of it had come together that morning, and he’d taken it out on Diane, right at a point where she wanted to talk about where she fi tted in his future - which, now he was relaxing over a meal in Jakarta, seemed to be the most acceptable thing a woman might want to do when she’d been going out with a bloke for six months.

  One of the things Mac had always liked about Diane was that -

  chips on shoulders aside - she didn’t make him feel like a pig.

  She ate as much as he did, also spoke with food in her mouth and laughed about how gross that was. She was one of those women who jam their fork into a piece of food and feed it to their bloke.

  The inferiority bit was all in his head.

  They were actually a right pair: sinking cold Singhas, taking the piss out of uptight Germans at exhibitions and laughing about their short-lived break-up.

  ‘I’m sorry about the whole voicemail thing, darling,’ she said, grabbing his forearm. ‘What a cliche! I can hardly believe I did that!’

  Mac apologised for avoiding a chat about what they might do in the future. And for doing the Harold Holt.

  ‘The what?’ she asked, laughing.

  ‘You know - the Aussie prime minister, the Chinese sub, the MSS?’

  ‘Tell me more.’ She widened her eyes.

  ‘Then I’d have to kill ya.’

  Mac didn’t know why he’d said that. It was an intel in-joke; you only really said it to someone in the community, someone who already knew. He was exhausted. Maybe he just wanted to come clean with her? Maybe that was part of his anxiety the last time they’d met?

  Mac changed the subject. ‘Remember that wine we got here last time? Time for a comeback?’

  Diane made a face that said, Bad idea.

  Mac remembered how they’d sunk a couple of bottles of the Balinese white muscat a few months ago. They’d got so drunk that Diane had tried to go for a swim in the harbour and had got down to her bra and undies before Mac and her driver could bundle her back into the car. The muscat gave Mac a hangover that would kill a wild brown dog, and Diane had an IT trade show to attend the next morning which she could only endure through a pair of very dark sunnies.

  So they ordered the wine.

  Carl, the driver, who had been standing against the wharf railing since they arrived, approached the table as Mac gave back the wine list. Carl looked at the owner, pointed at the table. The owner nodded, came back with the bottle, showed Carl the seal. Carl nodded, stepped back to his railing and let the owner cork the bottle and pour.

  Mac gave Carl the wink. ‘Thanks, champ. Anything we can get ya?

  You eaten?’

  Carl shook his head, his hands hovering over a black pouch-bag slung around his waist that was actually a disguised holster. ‘No thanks, Mr Davis. I’m right.’

  The British used ex-soldiers and ex-cops for their diplomatic protection details. The main risk in Jakarta, for people like Diane, wasn’t terrorism. It was snatches. And Carl had the body, the presence and the handgun that made Asian kidnappers pause. He was about fi ve-eleven, one hundred kilos and fi lled out his jeans and polo shirt like he was made of arms and legs and nothing else. His presence said, I don’t hesitate and I don’t miss.

  Mac relaxed with it, and drank.

  They fell into Diane’s cottage a little after midnight. Carl had already entered and done his recce, gun drawn. Diane held Mac against the vestibule wall in a deep kiss. She tasted of Balinese muscat. Smelled of shampoo and sea air.

  Carl walked past them, stood at the door, cleared his throat and looked at Diane. She rolled her eyes. Mac came forward instead, shut the door and turned the key to deadlock. Asked through the door,

  ‘Only one, mate?’

  Carl said, ‘Corner bolts, if you would, sir.’

  Mac slid the big stainless steel bolt at the bottom of the door into its hole in the fl oor, pushed the top one up into its steel slot above the doorjamb.

  ‘Thanks, sir,’ said Carl.

  ‘Goodnight, mate. Thanks for everything.’

  Mac pulled Diane onto his chest, so their faces almost touched. They were both naked, sated. Looking at her, he wrestled with the idea of coming clean. But it felt wrong. Like going into a forbidden zone. He hadn’t even had that discussion with his parents or sister.

  He wasn’t sure how he was ever going to unhitch himself from the lies, starting with his name. Diane had been forthcoming about her past: the dropping out from Cambridge, the attempt at being a kept woman in London in her early twenties, the Kuwaiti fi ance and her unanticipated drift into the world of IT and high-level sales

  - something she was good at and well rewarded for.

  Mac couldn’t tell her that kind of story about himself. Where would he start? With ASIS? The Royal Marines, Desert Storm, East Timor, the Bali bombing? Abu Sabaya? There were whole chunks of his life that not even Garvs knew the full story about.

  He decided to try a smaller bit of candour.

  ‘You know, that day at the restaurant in Chinatown? In Sydney?’

  Diane nodded.

  ‘I had a ring in my pocket. I was going to … umm … you know …’

  Diane smiled at him. ‘Do I?’

  ‘I was going to ask you to … aaah, be my fi ancee.’

  ‘Marry you?’

  ‘Aaah, yep.’

  She raised her head, smiled. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, but I couldn’t. It’s why I did a runner.’

  ‘Why?’ Diane pushed his hair back, looked from one of his eyes to the other.

  Mac almost said, ‘Cos I’ve been bullshitting. Lying to you.

  But he didn’t, pulled himself back.

  ‘I was too scared.’

  ‘You silly thing,’ said Diane, her eyes refl ecting disappointment.

  Mac lay awake while Diane snored softly. She’d taken it well. Said she was still in love with him. Said she wanted to think about the marriage bit.

  He was in love but confused. He found himself wondering about privilege and pecking orders and the level of personal security you got when you were born into the right world.

  He lay there thinking that it would work out just perfect if Jenny was assigned a Carl. Someone to guard the perimeter and let her relax at a restaurant: no more asking for the table furthest from the front window, no more demanding the seat that faced the door. Whenever he’d gone to a restaurant or movie with Jenny, she’d worn a holster-bag just like Carl’s. It sat on her lap like a security blanket.

  He’d never mentioned it to Jen. Never told her that if she got rid of the disguised holster, she might get herself a bloke.

  CHAPTER 20

  Rami was early. So was Mac. They greeted each other on the arranged corner. Mac stood at the back of the cab, looked around for eyes while Rami popped the trunk from the driver’s seat. Mac leaned in, opened t
he mail centre bag and checked the fi ve strands of cotton he’d left across the velcro strap of his holster. The cotton was intact. No one had been in there.

  Mac walked to the driver’s seat, gave Rami one of the hundred-dollar notes and said, ‘Gimme two minutes, champ.’

  He leaned into the trunk and opened the toilet bag, got the moustache on in twenty seconds, took longer with the contacts, but still fast for a bloke with no mirror. Trousering the passport and key, he tied the neck-rag and then pulled out the black backpack and pushed everything into it.

  There was a sudden racket, like mortar shells dropping on their tails and fi ring. Clunk! Whoosh! Clunk! Whoosh!

  It scared the shit out of Mac, who hit his head on the boot lid as he swivelled to fi nd it was just the sprinklers going on at exactly six am, all the way up and down Embassy Row. He was labouring under a hangover that felt like a croc was trying to death roll his brain. The airport was going to be a hoot.

  They made good time to Soekarno-Hatta. The air-con worked, which put a few more miles in Mac’s white shirt and chinos. He’d defi nitely have to buy more clothes in Makassar.

  He made small talk with Rami, who was excited about the money.

  His missus was excited too. Mac asked him to promise to use it for college. He had lived in South-East Asia long enough to know that when the missus of the house was a piece of work, it often meant household wealth was being siphoned to her parents or sibs. A weak husband was not a good thing to be in this part of the world.

  Rami promised, laughed as he saw Mac’s worried expression, and said, ‘My wife is my friend too, yes? But it always good to do what she says.’

  ‘When she says it, right?’ said Mac.

  Rami laughed, genuinely amused. ‘You married too?’

  ‘Nah, champ - but I’m aware of the general situation.’

  Mac stood outside Terminal 1, Rami’s cab waiting in the honking traffi c of the set-down area. Mac’s pack was in the back seat and Rami was waiting for the last hundred-dollar greenback - waiting for Mac to take a quick recce and come out with the all-clear. The airport police and POLRI were at the other end of the apron and Mac reckoned it would be at least three minutes before Rami got a face full of German shepherd.

  Mac still wore the specs, too-big clothes, his hair dark to match his black moustache. The coins were under his heels, the Heckler in his pack. The fear of God was in his head, helped on by his hangover.

  The Heckler was a calculated risk. Domestic fl ights out of Soekarno-Hatta were checked by security, but they would be selective in their searches, and Mac was hoping no one would make him for a hijack risk.

  Mac held up one fi nger to Rami, then walked slowly to the air-powered sliding doors of T1. Paused in front of the heavily tinted glass, looked at himself, controlled his shallow breathing, walked into the terminal.

  The place was almost packed - long lines at checkin, cafes, ATMs.

  Not bad for 6.50 am. Soekarno-Hatta had been stealing market share from KL, Singers and Honkers for several years and was now a Top Thirty airport by passenger movements. It suited Mac - he liked busy.

  He liked Top Thirty because they were the airports the drug mules targeted, which meant the cops would be looking elsewhere. From Mac’s perspective, he wanted the men and women behind the two-way glass in the observation rooms to be looking for the real bad guys. It was another reason Mac fl ew Lion when he travelled inside Indonesia. The major Indonesian airlines - Garuda and Merpati Nusantara - were housed in T2, the international terminal of Soekarno-Hatta. And it was T2 where all the ghost-corridors and two-way glass and surveillance equipment had been laid out like a customs man’s wet dream. That was good for Beefy, but not for Mac.

  Mac kept to the wall, staying relaxed in that nerdy way he’d developed for Brandon Collier. He walked down the side of the checkin hall where all the seats were arranged, heard families arguing about why a child couldn’t have Coca-Cola, watched businessmen reading the Jakarta Post, saw teenagers fi ddling with iPods, annoyed to be up so early with parents who so obviously sucked.

  Mac kept his eye on the Lion Air suite of checkins. It looked clear. No eyes, no magazines being read upside down. He walked further, to the end of the T1-A section and as he was about to turn, saw something.

  Totally froze.

  Held his breath.

  Hangover throbbed.

  Walking south from T1-B, straight towards him, past the Air Batavia and Kartika Air checkin suites, was a person he recognised.

  Shapely, tall, very good-looking. Female. Vietnamese-Australian.

  Mac was hungover enough to actually say ‘Fuck’ as he turned as smoothly as he could.

  A disaffected teenager looked up, a bit spooked that an oldie was more disaffected than her. He took off back to the Lion Air suite and around the corner. Back into the set-down area. He did it smooth but he was burning inside. The ASIS bird was there, which meant Matt was there.

  He stood on the set-down apron, saw the sun coming up, felt the heat and humidity starting to move into the air. Airport police were walking the lines of cars and cabs, telling drivers to move on: beagles for drug mules, German shepherds for those with a reading disability.

  Mac stared at Rami’s cab, coming to grips with something he’d just seen in the terminal. Something other than the ASIS bird. As he’d walked to the doors, he’d looked over to his right, where an Aussie surf clothes emporium beckoned shoppers with massive posters of young Anglos enjoying their unfettered lives in southern California and Surfers Paradise.

  Dominating the main window was a huge poster of Kelly Slater, the famous Californian surfer. The surf company had named their latest range after him. They called it ‘SL8TR’.

  Mac’s thought process had gone like this: that’s a clever marketing ploy in South-East Asia because of the acronyms and contractions the locals use with one another’s names. They contracted long multi-word names into one short one, such as Hispran, the Indon-Islamic leader from the 1970s whose full name was Haji Ismail Pranoto. Or they used acronyms, such as with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY.

  Once they had their contractions or acronyms, they fi led them down so they became a word in their own right. If you were an outsider, you could pick up the word but never know what it really meant.

  Mac stared over Rami’s cab, out over the sprawling megalopolis of Jakkers, where the brown haze was starting to rise. Acid rose in his throat. When Minky had told him the name of the person who had snatched his daughter, he had said ‘Eighty’, but Minky didn’t mean eighty, like the number. He was using an acronym: AT, the teenage nickname for an aspiring actor from the southern Philippines, whose name had been Aldam Tilao - before he’d changed it to Abu Sabaya.

  Abu Sabaya: pirate, bandit, terrorist and the most dangerous man in South-East Asia. Supposed to be dead.

  Peter Garrison and Abu Sabaya. Two psychos. Two very, very smart psychos. Now acting together? In league with someone in the CIA?

  Being helped by someone in ASIS? Or both?

  It scared Mac. He had to get to Makassar, start putting this thing together.

  He looked to his right, saw POLRI approaching, a shepherd straining on its leash.

  Rami was in front of him. Right there in front of his face. Mac came to. Shook it off.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Rami.

  Mac nodded, knowing there’d be little colour in his face, that his pupils were probably dilated. He turned to the POLRI guy, smiled, tapped his G-Shock. ‘My fault, offi cer - moving on now.’

  Rami turned, saw the POLRI guy and the shepherd and ran to his cab. Mac followed, leaned into the back seat, picked up the black pack.

  ‘Here you go, champ,’ said Mac, handing over the last hundred-dollar greenback. Rami smiled, took the money, turned to his right, wound down the window to talk with the POLRI guy. Mac noticed Rami averting his eyes, not actually looking at the cop. A car parked outside a public building was no big deal in Australia. In Indo
nesia it meant plenty, and Rami obviously didn’t want to be mistaken for someone with an ammonium nitrate experiment going on in the back seat.

  Rami put the cab into drive, and Mac said, ‘Mate, I just realised I need a blazer for my meeting in Makassar. You take Singapore dollars?’

  He nodded at the blazer hanging on the rear passenger’s handle.

  ‘Um, yeah. How much?’

  Mac showed a wad. Said, ‘There’s fi ve hundred there. For the college fund.’

  Rami smiled. ‘Sure.’

  Walking into T1 in his too-small dark blazer, Mac heard an announcement that included the words ‘Ujung Pandang, Makassar’.

  He guessed the fl ight would be boarding in fi ve minutes, closed in twenty.

  He found the biggest group of travellers and mingled through them, up into T1-B and T1-C. His stomach churned with fear but it helped him focus. He hopped from group to group, fi nding camoufl age, then he saw what he was looking for: Matt, walking away towards the end of the T1 hall. Mac watched him stop, talk to the breasts of a pretty Kartika stewardess.

  Boob-talker.

  He looked back, got on his tippy toes, saw the ASIS bird back at T1-A. Mac realised what Matt had done: he was simply covering the two departure gates that led into the departure lounges. He was waiting for Mac - knew he was heading for Makassar, knew it wouldn’t be on the major airlines.

  Someone knew.

  Mac would have to go through them, and if they’d been doing their job they would have looked through the surveillance tapes from Changi and realised what Mac now looked like.

  Mac couldn’t get through.

  And he couldn’t not go to Makassar.

  He had about two minutes to make a decision. He hadn’t even checked in.

  He saw a local bloke in a sports jacket and cream chinos. Black shoes, strong build, wide in the stomach and hips. Five-ten, about Mac’s age. Radio on his belt. A cop.

  Mac drilled further into the large group, pushed his hand into his pack and came out with the Heckler and the hip rig. He wouldn’t have time to set the whole thing up, thread it through all the belt loops, so he stripped the belt component out of the holster and put the holster and Heckler under his belt, just in front of his right hip bone. He took the specs off, trousered them. Then he edged up to the cop, keeping his back to the ASIS bird. Pulling out the Customs ID in his right hand, he folded it back slightly to obscure the picture page.