The plan was to get inside the Bennelong Systems cordon as fast as possible and then work out the way into NIME. Mac wanted to make this a fast gig, fi nd out who was behind the power-station consortium, write his report, get back to the Gold Coast and forget that the Fred-and-Wilma thing ever happened. He catalogued old pain as he worked the shampoo out of his hair, fi nding his injuries and telling himself he was healed now. It was a showering routine that allowed him to calm his thoughts and get his body relaxed.
There was an old problem in his right wrist, a cracked sternum, a broken nose from high school rugby and some chipped teeth on the right top from a fi ght Garvs had started in a Manila bar, which Mac had had to end.
And there was also his most recent injury. He hadn’t been as forceful as he might have with Jenny; hadn’t pointed out that being married to a female cop meant constantly having to trust her on long jobs and drinking sessions with male colleagues. All that time alone in cars – not every bloke would go along with it. But he hadn’t had the chance to say his piece because someone had tried to crush his urethra. Now it hurt to take a piss and it hurt to pull up his pants. It would probably also hurt to be aroused, which was what Jenny might have been thinking.
Through the glass sides he saw the door open and Diane walk into the steamed-up bathroom. Mac went to say something but she cut him off. ‘Sorry, just getting a fl annel,’ she said in a singsong voice, as if the real problem was his uptightness.
She was irritating him. He had let her go fi rst in the bath, gave her a good hour at it, so he could then move in and do his thing, come out to a ‘wife’ who was basically ready to go. But she was still walking around with a towel around her middle and another around her head.
Diane had done many more husband-and-wife ops than he had
– it was one of the reasons for having female spies – and she was a natural at keeping up the patter of married couples. It would really pay off when they got into public with their ease and momentum, but Mac felt she was playing with him. And playing with men was something she was very, very good at.
After Mac’s debacle with Garrison – a supposed VX nerve agent attack that had really been a massive gold heist – Joe Imbruglia had told him a story about Diane. During a stint in Thailand in the early 1990s, she’d apparently sparked a strange bit of ethnic cleansing. She’d been posing as a journalist and had joined a plutey Bangkok tennis club to get close to a general in the government. She’d done a little too well, the bloke had fallen for her and the wife had gone mental – so mad that she’d talked the tennis club into passing a by-law limiting the number of pale-eyed members. The wife had delivered the letter of expulsion to Diane personally, or so the story went. Diane had just smiled at her and said, ‘You can have him back now – I’ve had my turn.’ The members had still been trying to restrain the screaming wife as Diane drove her Audi out of the club’s car park.
Mac’s suit, dark blue and single-breasted, was draped on the sofa when he got into the living area of the suite. Diane had also polished his shoes, there was a new pair of socks that he recognised from the incredibly expensive men’s store underneath the lobby and his blue shirt was hanging off the curtain rail with the hotel’s iron cooling on the table beside the window. She’d ironed his shirt.
He felt grateful, touched; this wasn’t the service he got in Broadbeach. Then he could hear Jenny saying, She’s playing you, Macca, you great big goose!
Mac walked to the windows and watched the city lights going on outside as Jakarta fell into one of its plush tropical twilights. Moving over to the huge mirror he looked into pale blue eyes and a rugged face that was wide at the top and tapered in to a solid jaw. He still had all of his blond hair although it was thin, and he brushed it back straight off his face. His belly was still reasonably fl at and he had shoulders and arms.
He pulled on a clean pair of undies, pulled on the new socks and then slipped into the ironed shirt. He thought things through, allowing each piece of clothing to put another layer of cover on him.
When he was fully dressed, he was no longer Alan McQueen from Rockie; he was Richard Davis, professional fi xer for anyone trying to fi nd their way through the maze of EFIC and the land of taxpayer-backed export loan guarantees.
He was happy with the look and was glad for the advice that his ASIS mentor, Scotty, had given him when he fi rst started. Scotty had recommended Mac get a ‘real’ suit as soon as he could afford one. ‘In the world you’re going into,’ the intel veteran had told him, ‘you have no idea how far a good suit will take you. Trust me on this.’
When Mac had some spare coin, he’d gone down to a well-known tailor in Sydney and ordered their most conservative suit: dark blue, single-breasted, with spare pants. It had cost twice as much as the next cheapest, but he was still wearing it twelve years later and it allowed him to circulate among senior bureaucrats, bankers, barristers and wealthy businessmen without giving off a whiff of the pretender.
After shooting his cuffs, he fastened his dress watch. He felt cold and on edge – he wanted a fast turnaround.
They grabbed their name plates at the desk as they entered the Shangri-La’s ballroom on level two for the opening-night reception. It was huge and noisy, perhaps two thousand people yelling above the jazz quartet. Waiters in white tunics and black pants or skirts circulated with silver trays of booze and food, navigating between the crowds of animated Malaysians, Filipinos, Indonesians, Indians, Chinese, Australians, Thais, Japanese, Americans and Koreans.
Diane and Mac kept to the edges, moving slowly, fi nding the topography of the reception, scanning faces for the Bennelong duo and perhaps the NIME principals. It was classic Asian networking, where politicians, bankers, businesspeople, bureaucrats and military came together to see who could spread infl uence, and for whom.
When guidebooks for foreign business travellers said Asia was all about protocol and formality, they were only half right. Tomorrow at the sessions there’d be a lot of bowing, card-swapping deference and people using full titles. But tonight it was about booze and making jokes, jockeying for popularity and establishing social connections. As he looked around him Mac knew there’d be an unfortunate karaoke bar in Jakarta tonight where a bunch of drunk Koreans and Chinese would insist on each doing their own version of ‘My Way’. He’d been there, sung that. It was Seoul ‘01, with bottles of Chivas Regal, a Korean Air Force grandee, a Taiwanese shipping magnate and a bunch of hangers-on. By the time it was Mac’s turn to sing the Sinatra standard he was so drunk that he sang the whole thing with a Korean accent, right down to too few to rention. His hosts had almost died laughing.
He sensed Diane beside him, not looking too hard yet seeing everything. She was very good. Eyes fell on her as they strolled even though she’d dressed to play down her looks, wearing a simple white linen dress and blue and white sandals. She wore no jewellery and held a small silk clasp that was so discreet it was almost hidden by her left hand.
Eventually they paused and two waiters converged on them at once. Mac grabbed a beer and Diane asked for a glass of champagne, which both of the blokes wanted to get for her.
‘At my ten o’clock,’ smiled Diane, grabbing Mac’s beer and taking a sip. ‘The Bennelong boys, and no wives,’ she said, giving the beer back.
Mac turned slowly, making it look like a scan of the room. They were fi fteen metres away and surrounded by yelling Malaysian and Thai men and their wives. Vitogiannis had his back to them but Mac could see he was a man who took pride in his appearance. Their conversation looked intense and Grant was pointing at his partner, poking the air.
Diane’s champagne fl ute arrived and Mac gave her a wink. ‘The pants-man cometh.’
Alex Grant looked up as Mac virtually walked into him. Mac feigned surprise. ‘Alex Grant,’ he said, as if sifting through his memory. ‘Not the Thomas Technology Alex Grant? The controls guru?’
Grant peered at him for a split second and then burst into a modest smile. ‘That’s me, although I don’t know about the guru bit, er, Mr…?’ He looked at Mac’s name plate ‘… Davis. Pleased to meet you, Richard.’
‘G’day, Alex – meet my wife, Diane,’ said Mac, bringing Diane into the circle between Vitogiannis and himself. As they greeted each other Mac sized it up. Grant was tall and lean, in an off-the-rack suit and cheap shoes. His skin was pinkish and his teeth au naturel. He had come up in the world but in his heart he was still an air force engineer.
It wasn’t hard to separate Grant from his business partner because Vitogianni had leapt straight into the Diane web. About fi ve-ten and fi t-looking, Vitogiannis was well-dressed. His silky black hair was swept back off his face and his teeth were expensively maintained.
‘So, Richard,’ asked Grant, grabbing a new beer from a waiter,
‘what does Davis Associates do?’
‘A bit of lobbying,’ said Mac. ‘Facilitation, making ends come together.’
‘Sounds like a broad brief,’ said Grant.
Mac went for modesty. ‘Well, I guess facilitation sounds a bit grand.’
‘What do you facilitate?’
‘Technology transfers, cross-border JVs,’ said Mac, swinging his beer bottle in a casual arc, ‘you know, big projects up here that need a little shoehorning from the Canberra end.’
‘Shoehorning?’
‘Well, yeah – blokes in Canberra hate that term, but you know, the Ministers are busy, the bureaucrats are busy. I just put the case for a deal, for jobs, balance of payments. You know, that shit.’
Grant looked around him and moved closer to Mac. ‘Well,’ he smiled, ‘tell me more.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, how does… What kind of background would someone like you have?’
Mac shrugged. He wanted this fi rst meeting to be a teaser, and was projecting reluctance. ‘Well, I suppose my previous lives seemed fairly boring at the time, but it seems Aussie companies need a guide through the exporting labyrinth, huh? And you know, Alex, not all exports are simple. Some are services and often they’re strategic services. It’s complex, mate, and that usually means some shoehorning.’
Mac grabbed a spring roll, keeping the napkin for wiping his fi ngers. He looked away, looked back. ‘But this is all probably boring for you -‘
‘So, you were a diplomat?’
‘No, no,’ laughed Mac. Grant was hooked – the tease had only taken ten seconds and he was about to lift his skirt. ‘Actually I used to work in a place called EFIC, heard of it?’
Grant’s eyes went wide and he nodded. Mac continued. ‘Terrible name, but interesting work. I was on the risk side and then on the deals side – due diligence, debt pricing, that sort of stuff.’
‘Really?’ asked Alex Grant, transfi xed.
‘Yeah, it was great, fascinating. But I ended up in Canberra as a specialist adviser to the Minister for Trade.’
‘Advising on what?’ asked Grant, looking Mac up and down.
‘Oh, well, you probably wouldn’t have heard of it,’ said Mac, looking away.
‘Try me.’
‘Deals that come under a system called NIA – it’s not well known but they can be really big, really complex deals.’
Grant stared at him like he’d seen a ghost.
Mac went on, ‘That’s National Interest -‘
‘Yeah, yeah. I know what it is,’ snapped Grant. He looked around him, obviously frazzled. ‘Tell me, Richard, is that what you facilitate?
NIA?’
‘Well, yeah – that’s most of it actually. If the loan guarantees are written by Sydney, then it’s all fi ne, right? You’re in.’
Grant nodded.
‘But it’s when it’s knocked back and you’re lucky enough to get a second chance with NIA – that’s when the fun starts,’ chuckled Mac,
‘because then it’s going political.’
‘Shit!’ said Grant, looking at the ceiling.
The bloke was hooked and Mac affected a chortle. ‘I perhaps shouldn’t tell you this, Alex, but once it gets into a minister’s offi ce, if you’ve got no one to walk you through it, you’re fucked, mate.’
Grant turned sullen. ‘Don’t need you to tell me that.’
‘Shit, Alex. Sorry mate,’ said Mac, feigning disappointment in himself. ‘I had no idea – I shouldn’t have said any of that. I take it back.’
‘No, no, it’s okay,’ sighed Grant. ‘That’s the fi rst honest thing I’ve heard anyone say about this entire fucking process.’
Mac waited, something catching his eye in the background.
‘I have breakfast at seven,’ said Alex Grant. ‘Can we meet?’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Mac, handing over his card before his attention was taken by a waiter on the other side of the ballroom.