The taxi driver outside Canberra Airport looked at Mac too hard, so he walked to the next cab, asked for St John’s Church.
It was a scorching morning and the well-wishers stood in the old gardens around the colonial church on Constitution Avenue, looking out over Lake Burley Griffi n. Mac strolled to the church, clocking several APS lookouts with handguns on their hips, and then saw Scotty, fagging by the wooden gate to the main path.
‘Macca,’ said Scotty, putting out his hand.
‘How’s it going, mate?’ replied Mac.
Silence sat between them for a couple of seconds, both of them affected by the deaths of Tony and Vi, and neither very good at expressing it. The funerals would be in Perth two days before Christmas, but this was a memorial for the intelligence and diplomatic world.
‘Get the bastards?’ asked Scotty, his roundish face red in the heat.
‘Not yet, mate,’ said Mac, looking away.
The name Hassan Ali had worked deeply into his life. Now, thanks to Hassan, he was standing in a churchyard about to farewell a couple of people who had been very dear to him. In the intelligence game there were careerists and employees and all the rest of them, just like in any organisation. And then there were the brothers, the thousand-per centers – people like Davidson and Scotty and Ted, people you could develop more trust with in one hour than you could with an Atkins or an Urquhart in a lifetime.
Mac tried to calm his fury and collect himself. He wanted this to be a memorial service where he thought about Tony’s toughness and Vi’s humour and charity. Neither of them had been much into pity. But when Mac walked into the beautiful old sandstone church, he saw the garlands, saw the photographs on the easels and heard the soft organ music. And as he sat in the pew he had a momentary problem with the pollen.
The parishioners put on a tea party in the gardens of St John’s afterwards, and Mac stood under the awning talking with various wives and intel types he’d met over the years. There were British and American spooks and a Japanese diplomat. As the party wound down, Greg Tobin touched him on the elbow and led him out from under the awning and over to the graveyard.
‘So, how are we doing with Limelight?’
‘I was right about the water-purifi cation canister,’ he said, making sure no one was behind him, ‘but they lost us in the outback.’
‘They?’
‘Hassan, Shareef, a hit man called Lempo. And we might have an Indonesian in there too – intel bloke.’ Mac kicked at grass. ‘So, Greg, any progress on Tony and Vi?’
‘Not the cops, mate,’ said Tobin.
‘No, I mean, given any thought to how they were tracked down?’
‘Look, mate, we’re all a little upset -‘
‘I just want to tick it off,’ snapped Mac. ‘Call it housekeeping.’
Tobin sighed. ‘I’m waiting for the Queensland cops to do their paperwork, then – if it looks bad from the fi rm’s perspective – I’m sure the DG will want an internal inquiry.’
‘Screw the DG, Greg. I mean, really! You’re a director of operations and we look after our own. We should know who leaked Vi’s maiden name because I reckon that’s how they were found,’ he said.
Tobin looked into his iced water. ‘You’re right. By the way, I was circularised this morning. Limelight’s being joined by a bunch of Americans.’
‘Really?’ asked Mac.
‘Called the Twentieth, something something -‘
‘Twentieth Support Command,’ said Mac. ‘CBRNE experts from the US Army.’
Tobin crinkled his forehead. ‘Whole bunch of them landed at Amberley about two this morning. Chinooks, Hawks, spooks in overalls. There’s a bloke running them, calls himself Don.’
The one o’clock fl ight was late and then was delayed in Sydney, which was even hotter than Canberra – the TV said thirty-nine degrees. Mac sat in the Qantas lounge, glad to be in the air-con. The waitress cleared his table and he wandered to the bar, grabbed a beer, saw his tail as he walked back. He was a dark-haired Anglo male, medium height and build, in business clothes. He was bland and his complexion told Mac the guy spent more time indoors than out.
The Nokia sounded as he resumed his seat. It was Ari, wanting an update.
‘Mate, I could ask you the same thing,’ said Mac as he sipped on the Crown Lager. ‘Chased them from Darwin into Queensland and lost them. How’d you go with the cops?’
‘Well, my friend, I am salesman, from Russia, and my credentials are good.’
‘Don’t tell me – they rang a number in Moscow, right? All a big misunderstanding.’
Ari laughed. ‘So I am now thinking we looking at where Hassan is heading, yes?’
‘That’s the idea, mate. How about the east coast of Australia?’
‘That’s a large place.’
‘True.’
‘So,’ said Ari, a little wheedling. ‘No more intel, nothing we can work on?’
‘Not that I can think of, mate.’
‘What about this latents?’
‘BAIS took two latents from a notepad at the Galaxy hotel. The fi rst was a phone number that led them to a traitor. The second one -‘
‘I have here.’
‘What?!’
‘Well, yes, McQueen,’ he said. ‘You know how it is.’
Mac couldn’t believe Mossad had a tap on a BAIS phone line. ‘So what do you make of it?’
‘I am not knowing, McQueen – I need to sit down, have chat about this.’
Mac rubbed his face. He’d wanted to spend some time with Jenny and Rachel and he had the Sarah situation to cover, and then Frank and Pat were in town too.
‘Okay, mate.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Let’s say six o’clock in the Iluka?’
‘Okay, McQueen. Be careful, yes?’
‘More than most, mate.’
He called John Morris, who sounded upbeat. The AFP had a sighting at the Isis River BP station just out of Maryborough. Two South Asian men in a white Nissan Patrol: both well dressed, one in his forties, the other early thirties. The pump attendant was suspicious because they looked too classy to be running around at two am and then they paid in cash and didn’t want the receipt. The bloke got the fi rst part of the rego – GU. And there was now a wide alert with the local cops.
‘We looking at Queensland as the target, John?’ asked Mac, feeling the sense of confusion fi nally getting down to a sharper point.
‘Too early to say, mate.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Mac, annoyed at the whole cautious cop routine. ‘But now we’d have to be concluding Brissie, Gold Coast, right?’
‘It’s the only conclusion, mate. We don’t have a choice.’
Mac was being shut out of it. The cops had narrowed the threat into something they could manage – and hopefully defeat – and Mac was happy he’d at least helped get them to this stage.
‘And McQueen?’
‘Yeah, mate?’
‘Nice work with the luggage tags and satellites. You did good.’
After ringing off, Mac slugged back his beer, stood and walked past the tail, keeping his pace normal. He went down the escalators to the ground level, found the gents and eased into a toilet cubicle. Putting his backpack on the cistern, he lowered the seat, sat and waited. As people came and went, he acclimatised to the sounds and waited for the right gait. Men didn’t creep into a toilet, they stormed it. So Mac waited for the slow squeak of the door and a lack of footfalls as his tail cased the place. He waited eleven minutes, until there was one other bloke, with a histrionic style, and no one else.
He was right on the verge of suggesting the other cubicle occupant went easier on the processed meats when the door made a light squeal and the concourse noise fl ooded in for slightly too long.
Someone had paused at the door. Mac held his feet up and waited for the footfalls to come close and then he fl ung open the cubicle door.
The tail was right in front of the cubicle, his face betraying him. Mac lunged but the tail was ready and attempted a stamp kick. Rushing him, Mac knocked the tail off-balance and pushed him up off his feet into the wall, holding him in a half nelson.
The tail struggled and clawed at Mac’s face but after a few seconds Mac’s pressure on the carotids worked their magic and the tail faded into unconsciousness.
Mac dragged the bloke into his cubicle, sat him on the lowered seat, leaned him back, shut the door and ratted him. He had about two minutes before the bloke woke up fully and he tried the suit pockets and came up with boarding passes in the name of Short, John James; one Sydney to Coolangatta and the other one a Singapore Airlines fl ight from Singers to Brisbane. Same fl ight as Mac had taken.
Checking the other jacket pocket, Mac came up with a Nokia phone while the tail snored. Pulling out his own phone, Mac put the tail’s SIM card into his own Nokia and transferred the contacts to
‘phone’. Then went to ‘calls made’ and saved the top one and went to calls received and saved the top one. He put the SIM back in John Short’s phone and put the phone and wallet back where they came from. As the bloke snorted for breath Mac undid the tail’s belt and pulled his pants and undies off, checking the undies label as he did so: T.M. Lewin boxer shorts, in the same colour as his cotton Oxford.
Putting the pants and undies in his pack, Mac walked out.
There was a middle-aged security guard in front of Mac as he came out. The bloke looked to be a proper sort of Aussie bloke, so Mac, acting concerned, leaned in.
‘Mate, this is embarrassing – but there’s a drunk in there asking men for sex.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, champ. It’s not like I’m homophobic or anything, but I am a Catholic. Understand?’
The guard understood perfectly and Mac walked towards his boarding gate.
The last call John Short had made had been to a local mobile number, but the last call he’d received had the Jakarta prefi x, 6221, in front of a landline number Mac vaguely recognised. He couldn’t place it so as his cab made north for Broadbeach from Coolangatta Mac thought what the fuck and pressed the green button. It connected into TI and made those strange ringing sounds with a big gap between them. An English female voice answered and said, Coastal Trading Company, may I help you?
Mac hung up, breathed out as he sank into the back seat of the cab and saved John Short’s ‘contacts’ list from ‘phone’ to ‘SIM’.
Danny, he thought, tapping his teeth with the Nokia. Danny fucking Fitzgibbon.