Mark Abernethy - Double back

‘So what do you think he wanted?’ asked Davidson.

‘He wanted me to take that,’ he said, pointing at the English translation of Operation Extermination that Davidson held in his hands, ‘and he wanted it to be taken up by Aussie intel and military.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Habibie’s isolated and he needs Canberra to be kicking up a fuss about the Indonesian Army in East Timor, not going along with the generals.’

There was a knock at the door and Sally entered.

‘Get me the full logs on this phone, okay, Sal?’ said Davidson.

‘Sure, boss,’ she said, smiling at Mac as she took the phone.

‘And I need it asap.’

After she closed the door, Mac continued. ‘Revealing something like Operation Extermination could weaken the generals, but only if there’s international outrage.’

‘And if Habibie sticks his neck out too far in Jakarta, he gets it chopped, right?’ asked Davidson.

‘Yep,’ said Mac. ‘He’s trying to take the Republic into a democratic era but he doesn’t have a military power base. The military is also worried about the DPI gaining too much popularity post-Soeharto,’ said Mac, referring to the left-wing political party headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri.

‘Okay,’ said Davidson, weighing the documents and staring at Mac over the top of his reading glasses. ‘Let’s say Operation Extermination is real and there’s a deportation project planned for East Timor – what’s this false-flag thing that Ali was talking about? What do you make of that?’

‘Ali said the real campaign that was hidden behind Operation Extermination was called Operasi Boa,’ said Mac.

‘We know about that, right?’ said Davidson, flipping back through his notebook.

‘It was one of my targets in Masquerade,’ said Mac. ‘The meaning of Operasi Boa was what the Canadian was supposed to establish at his final meeting with Blackbird.’

‘Of course,’ said Davidson. ‘And?’

‘Well, then Bongo took him out – he thought I was being threatened.’

‘So let’s get it straight,’ said Davidson, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head. ‘The President’s office signs off on orders from the general staff. Those orders are Operation Extermination, a depopulation program for post-ballot East Timor. But the President’s office has a spy among the generals who reveals there’s something much worse hidden behind Extermination – it’s called Operasi Boa and we have no idea what it might be?’

‘That’s where we’re up to,’ said Mac.

‘I suppose it comes back to Ali’s credibility, and he’s not totally the good guy,’ said Davidson, reaching for his coffee, ‘because you found a corpse in his car, right?’

‘The Korean – Lee Wa Dae,’ said Mac, spelling the name.

‘Who is?’ asked Davidson, jotting a note.

‘I thought he was just a rude Korean businessman – he was staying at the Turismo. But in Ali’s bag there was a bunch of telephotos, two of them featuring Lee Wa Dae meeting with Bill Yarrow,’ said Mac as he handed over the manila envelope.

‘Yarrow’s our Canadian, right?’ said Davidson, pulling the eight-by-fives out of the envelope and going through them.

‘That’s him,’ said Mac, craving another coffee.

Pausing and looking back and forth between two of the telephotos, Davidson’s forehead creased.

‘Saigon?!’ he said. ‘What the fuck is our Canadian doing in Saigon with this Korean prick?’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk about, Tony,’ said Mac, pushing the black Adidas bag across the table. Pulling out one of the cash-cushions, Davidson held the US dollars in front of him and looked down at the logo on the bag. ‘We know what this says?’

‘Vacation Palace Hotel and Casino, Poi Pet.’

‘Oh really?’ spat Davidson, throwing the cash on the conference table and looking at the ceiling. ‘Poi Pet! That’s great, that really is.’

The Vacation Palace was a Cambodian money-laundering operation run by the North Korean generals. Their heroin money came back from the United States, Canada, Australia and France and was exchanged for chips in their own casinos. Having been laundered, the subsequent US dollars paid out by the cashiers were used to buy real estate, gold and businesses all over the world.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ whispered Davidson, reaching for the phone and dialling.

‘Judy,’ he said into the phone, ‘I need a priority work-up on Lee Wa Dae – Korean or North Korean – and I need it yesterday, okay?’

As he spelled the name Mac could imagine Judy Hyams scrawling on her notebook, putting her ego aside to deal with Davidson’s demands. A part-time lecturer at the Australian National University and a full-time head of research at ASIS, Judy suffered Davidson’s demands in a way that women weren’t supposed to in the 1990s. Still, she always got the leave she wanted and Davidson religiously remembered her birthday.

‘Thanks, Jude…’ he barked, but didn’t put the phone down.

‘We do?’ said Davidson, addressing the phone with a new tone in his voice. ‘Let’s have it.’

He listened and then, putting the phone down, took off his glasses and massaged his eyeballs with his left hand.

‘Lee Wa Dae is known to us, apparently,’ he said, peering out from now-bleary eyes.

‘Who is he?’ asked Mac, troubled by Davidson’s demeanour.

‘He’s a bag man for the North Korean Army’s drug business.’

The doors to the gents flapped and Davidson was back in the public bar of the Victoria Hotel. Outside, tourists meandered along Smith Street mall in the tropical heat.

‘So I guess I don’t need to say this, Macca,’ said Davidson, checking his watch. ‘But when you debrief with Atkins, why don’t we leave out the Rahmid Ali involvement? For the time being, eh?’

‘You mean that the President’s office tried to speak to me direct?’

‘Yes, that,’ said Davidson, looking around the pub. ‘I’m thinking there might be another way to move on this. I’ll tell him about it later, when we’ve explored it.’

‘Another way?’ said Mac.

‘Trust me – do your meeting with Atkins in Denpasar.’

‘What if he takes it, tries to write it himself?’ said Mac.

‘Do nothing, Macca, just call me,’ growled Davidson. ‘If Atkins really wants to step up a weight division, then it’ll be me writing the CX, okay?’

‘Okay, Tony. But…’ started Mac, before trailing off.

‘Get your phone charged and call me as soon as you’ve looked at Rahmid’s phone logs,’ said Davidson. And then he was out of the air-conditioning and into a cab parked at the kerb.

Sipping on the remains of his beer, Mac thought about his evening flight to Denpasar and what awaited him there. Martin Atkins would be uncomfortable with too much intelligence that slandered the Indonesian military and possibly messed with his own corporate advancement plan. Mac would have to be particularly careful about the Canadian: Bill Yarrow was connected with Atkins and any bad news about the Canadian’s true loyalties would have the potential to hurt Atkins’ career. If that looked likely, Atkins would do what all good office guys did: blame the field guy.

The tail didn’t stay hidden and didn’t make any of the standard gestures that would blend him into the streetscape: no magazines or newspapers, no caps pulled down over dark glasses, no ostentatious tourist maps. Judging by the chinos, polo shirt and Annapolis ring, he was American, and as Mac left the Victoria the tail simply rose from the park bench and followed.

Keeping a normal pace, Mac walked through the afternoon sunshine of Darwin, down Smith Street towards the Civic Centre and then around in a loop past Parliament until he was walking northwest down Mitchell Street through all the tourists and backpackers. The crowds gave him a chance to think about what was going on. Was the tail a remnant of the East Timor operation – had Jessica debriefed with the Defense Intelligence Agency and inadvertently made Mac more interesting than he wanted to be? Or was this tail the CIA, tailing an Aussie in Darwin?