Mark Abernethy - Double back

‘Same as you,’ said Mac, as light as he could. ‘You stay in hotels like the Turismo often enough, then you meet people like Manny. If you find them useful to travel with, you make a friendship, come to an arrangement.’

Sipping at the excellent New Zealand sauvignon blanc, Mac wished Jessica would get off the occupational line. He lived his work and there were times when he just wanted to enjoy the wine, appreciate the company and not have to do the dance of the seven veils.

‘You know, Jessica, I’ve been wondering about you.’

‘That’s a good start,’ she said.

‘Well, actually – you’re probably sick of talking about you,’ said Mac, smiling.

‘Oh, you bastard!’ she shrieked, but finding it funny. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘I was wondering why you don’t have a boyfriend? I mean, you’re -’

‘You mean, am I a psycho?’

‘It had occurred to me,’ said Mac.

‘Ha!’ she laughed, looking around. ‘I had a boyfriend. Wayne.’

‘Can he still chew food?’ asked Mac.

‘Very funny, Mr Richard!’

‘Social issue?’ Mac asked.

‘Like?’

‘Like at fifty-seven, why’s Wayne living with Mum?’

Jessica chuckled and then lowered her voice. ‘Actually, when men say they like a smart girl, they don’t always mean it.’

‘What happened?’

‘Undergraduate was fine – making law school was a bridge too far for a man just starting his career as a junior marketing manager.’

‘So?’ asked Mac.

‘We were dating. I got accepted. We broke up. The end,’ she said, shrugging but sad.

Sipping in silence, they avoided one another’s eyes until Jessica put her hand across the table and grasped Mac’s forearm.

Opening her mouth to speak, nothing came out.

‘Yes?’ said Mac.

‘Umm – nothing,’ said Jessica, releasing her grip and sitting back. ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

Standing beside the taxi as it idled outside the officer apartments, Mac was torn. He could get in the cab, do the Harold Holt and go to Darwin airport, or he could try to make amends with Jessica. Perhaps say a proper goodbye. The past few days had been emotional for both of them, worsened by his reticence about starting a relationship with a girl who didn’t even know his real name. If they’d met while he was visiting his folks in Rockhampton, he’d have been plain old Alan McQueen. But, short of marrying her – not on the cards at this stage of his career – Mac was not going to reveal his true identity. There was no statute of limitations on the kind of anger he’d engendered in his professional life. His only protection was hiding his identity, an advantage ruined once you revealed it to a civilian woman.

But there was one conversation he could have with her, if he could convince himself that it wouldn’t ruin his other objectives.

‘Shit!’ he said to himself finally, and asked the driver to hold for a minute.

Knocking on Jessica’s door, he was edgy, even if he hadn’t worked out what he was going to say.

‘Go away,’ came Jessica’s muffled voice from behind the door.

‘Look, Jessica,’ he whispered, not wanting half the base to come out and ask him what was up. ‘I’m sorry about the flight, okay?’

‘Oh piss off!’ came the response.

‘It was the only flight to Denpasar, and my company booked me on it – I’m sorry,’ said Mac, trying not to yell.

‘Sorry?!’ she said, the door opening with a flourish. ‘You take me to dinner, and take me to bed, and then as an afterthought you tell me you’re flying out tonight?’

‘Can we keep it down?’ asked Mac, looking around. ‘People are trying to sleep.’

‘It’s ten past nine,’ said Jessica, and Mac could see her eyes were puffy. ‘I wanted to spend time with you, Richard – I can’t do this on my own.’

‘I know,’ said Mac, putting his arms around her.

‘I’m scared,’ she sobbed into his neck. ‘ Really scared.’

Over Jessica’s shoulder, Mac saw Gillian Baddely emerge from an apartment, give him a nasty look and shake her head.

‘I have a plane to catch,’ mumbled Mac, and pushing himself away he headed for the cab, trying to put Jessica’s sobs out of his mind.

The one thing he could have told her was that her father was last seen in the Kota Baru barracks in Baucau. But Mac had decided not to, and he didn’t want Jessica looking into his eyes.

Mac’s new Nokia buzzed while he was standing with other travellers at Bali International Airport, waiting for the stragglers to assemble in front of the minivan driver with the Natour Bali sign. Looking at the phone, Mac dialled into the secure voicemail servers in Canberra and got a message from Marty Atkins: the late-night debrief meeting was postponed, new time eleven o’clock the following morning.

After running some basic security checks on his bungalow at the Natour, Mac jammed a chair under the door handle, stripped and made for the bathroom. The shower felt good and Mac sensed his energy making a comeback as he padded through the spacious bungalow at the Natour, keeping the lights down and checking the windows from the side of the curtains. Grabbing a cold Bintang from the mini-bar, he sat at the writing desk and opened his wheelie bag, taking the seven pages of logs from Rahmid Ali’s phone.

The account had only been opened three weeks earlier and Mac ran his eyes down the list of dialled numbers, looking for the patterns. There was one number that recurred – Mac noticed it because it had a ‘61’ prefix, followed by a variety of mobile numbers, meaning Australia.

Another cluster of numbers showed eighteen calls to a number with a ‘6221’ prefix on the day Mac flew into Dili. The times for the calls went from the morning of Mac’s arrival to the morning of the next day. So Rahmid Ali had been feverishly calling someone in Jakarta, even as he watched Mac at Dili’s airport.

The numbers, dates and durations started from the left side of the pages, and on the right were the work-ups on each number. They were notated as if in stylised speech bubbles for a cartoon. Most of them were to the Presidential Building in Jakarta, where Ali probably had his office, or at least someone to answer to. There were calls to the Dominion Bank of Singapore in Singapore – not surprising, since most educated elites in Indonesia had their doctors, banks and dentists on the island republic, even as they spruiked Indonesia’s place in the world.

These weren’t what Mac was looking for. He wanted something that looked like a front or a cut-out – a number either unlisted or burdened with a nondescript name. As Mac leaned back, rubbing his eyes, he suddenly remembered the business card Rahmid Ali had given him in the garden of the Turismo.

Mac rummaged through the side pockets of his wheelie bag and pulled out the card. In dark blue printing were the words Andromeda IT Services and then the sat-phone number which Ali had underlined in fine black ballpoint. It also listed a corporate address in KL, a landline and a fax number. Comparing the numbers with the phone logs, Mac ran his finger down the list but didn’t come up with a match. The Andromeda numbers were fronts, and when Rahmid Ali really wanted to speak with his organisation, he probably did it direct with Jakarta.

Keying his Nokia, Mac waited for the pick-up and the challenge. He gave his code and the operation name, and even though it was one o’clock in the morning in Canberra, he still had a research assistant on the end of the line. The Telstra mobile service he used wasn’t the kind you could buy retail – it ran on the government-consular security network, and when he worked in South-East Asia it was diverted through Singapore’s security cellular system.