Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

‘We need to get your brief straight,’ said Joe.

‘So shoot.’

‘There’s going to be some pressure down there to, umm, widen things.’

‘Widen? It hasn’t started yet, has it?’ asked Mac.

‘Ah, yeah. The Indons might have a broader view of what went down, right?’ said Joe, sounding embarrassed.

‘Well they’re talking about three blasts – guess any cop is going to want to start with them as separate events,’ said Mac.

‘Well, umm…’

‘Yes, Joe?’

‘Our job is to keep it sensible,’ said Joe.

Mac felt bile rising. He was trained for this, it was what he did. But he was the son of a police detective and he knew how investigations got twisted and bent by higher authorities with all sorts of different motives.

‘Sensible?’ asked Mac.

‘Yeah, mate. There’s no point in letting this get beyond what it obviously is, eh?’ chuckled Joe with false bonhomie.

‘Obviously?’

‘McQueen, don’t give me that tone…’

‘What, the you’re full of shit tone?’

Joe let out a long breath. ‘Mate, let’s keep it simple: this is an investigation into Indonesian jihadists carrying out an IED attack on Australians and other Anglos, right?’

‘Just your good old anfo light show. Ammoniuum nitrate and fuel oil strikes again?’ said Mac, trying not to sound snide.

‘Well, you know how the Indons get – all those conspiracy theories about the Christians and the Jews trying to discredit the poor Muslims.’

‘You been down here?’

‘McQueen, this is JI carrying out their threats. It’s pretty clear, right?’

‘Oh really?’

‘Fuck’s sake, McQueen. You want that UN gig? Well get with the program!’

Mac couldn’t believe the threat. He’d earned the right to New York.

Joe sighed. ‘Mate, sorry ‘bout that. I just need you to make this happen, okay? That’s what you’re being paid to do down there. I told them I’d send my best guy.’

Mac watched a group of Aussies come into the restaurant. Two young men were supporting a middle-aged woman who was beyond distraught. It looked like her legs were going to give out before they got a chair under her. Tears poured down her face.

The hairs went up on the back of Mac’s neck. ‘ Them? Who’s them, Joe?’

There was a pause while Joe thought of the right offi ce guy words.

‘You know, Canberra.’

‘DFAT?’

Mac heard Joe swallow. ‘No, McQueen – we’re working for PMC on this one, okay?’

Cover-within-cover had become second nature for Mac. As an S2 intelligence offi cer who undertook paramilitary operations, he was completely beneath the radar of most embassy types, as well as the majority of ASIS personnel. Holding an S2 status from the Minister for Foreign Affairs meant you had the right to carry and use fi rearms.

Only the Minister, the Director-General of ASIS and Mac’s controller on the particular job knew what was really happening.

Over the years he’d acclimatised to the fact that there were American soldiers, Indonesian spies and British diplomats who knew more about his real occupation than some of the Aussies he had lunch with once a week. That was cover-within-cover, the Russian Doll effect. It meant deceiving co-workers in a casual way, but now Joe was dragging him into a whole new level of internal deceit. Mac’s employer was DFAT, but for this operation he’d be taking orders from PMC, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

PMC was the super-department in Canberra, the place where the truly power-obsessed bureaucrats, soldiers, spies and economic advisers wanted to be. It was the card that trumped everything else, even DFAT, Treasury and Defence. PMC was the only department in the Australian government where all initiatives and policies trickled down from one politician – the Prime Minister. Every other department’s senior bureaucrats worked on the ‘capture and control’ method of bending a new minister to their will. PMC was the one department where you didn’t have to justify your expenses claim or be concerned about staying in some four-star hovel. You fl ew in the front of the plane, you stayed in hotel rooms that were more than one room.

Mac fi nished his green tea, trying to get to the bottom of his nagging paranoia. He didn’t like high-ranking politicians meddling in the operations side of things. And he didn’t like it being the politicians who wanted him to lie to his colleagues. If he wanted to deceive someone, he’d make that call. The fact that Joe was using a new pre-paid mobile meant he was already operating clandestinely in the Manila embassy too, trying to defeat the ASIS listening posts. Joe and Mac had become a Loop of Two, the second easiest asset to deny, after the Loop of One.

Leaving some money on the table, Mac unplugged the Nokia and made for the front doors.

One of the Aussies who had been supporting the grieving woman looked up as he passed and Mac stopped.

‘Need anything?’ asked Mac.

‘Sister,’ said the bloke, shaking his head, tears welling in bloodshot eyes. ‘Gone, mate. Bronnie. Fucking gone!’

The woman – Mac guessed the mother – started wailing again and put her face in her hands, her back heaving with the sobs. Mac saw that the two blokes, both mid-twenties, were covered in dirt, blood and grazes. Their sneakers were cut up and there was dust and dirt through their hair. They’d been up all night, guessed Mac, searching through rubble.

Mac put his hand out. ‘Alan McQueen – Foreign Affairs.’

‘Dave,’ the young man replied. ‘David Bruce. This is my brother-in-law Gavin Taylor – Bron’s husband. And my mum.’

The mum looked at him, bereft, but Gavin looked away, clearly one of those blokes who didn’t like to cry. Mac took it in: an Aussie family on a cheapie holiday and suddenly they’re minus a daughter, down one sister, missing a wife.

‘Bron’s eight months pregnant. It’ll be the fi rst grandchild on either side,’ added Dave.

Mac said he’d do what he could and gave them a card. Then he wrote David’s hotel number on the back of another card. As he did so he had a fl ash of the man who trained him at induction: Rod Scott.

Scotty had once told him, over eight or nine beers in Basrah, that spooks grew cynical because they gave their loyalty to an idea for too long at the expense of loyalty to their people. The penny fi nally dropped, right there, looking at this mother and her grief. Something shifted and Mac realised that PMC only trumped other ideas, it didn’t trump human beings.

Bronnie! Shit, every Australian knew a Bronnie.

Mac saw his tail the moment he left Poppies. Close-cropped sandy hair, big build that fi lled out a black trop shirt, Levis and well-worn black Hanwags – the European version of Hi-Tecs. Mac had him as intel or military. He stood amongst a bunch of locals and tourists against the roadblock barriers on Legian Street. As soon as Mac made him, the bloke turned away slightly.

Moving across the street until he was at the bloke’s six o’clock, Mac started walking towards the tail really fast. If the bloke was a pro he’d look away from Mac for at least eight seconds before taking another butcher’s, and when he did Mac would be right there. Mac wasn’t trying to be dramatic. The bloke had a black pouch around his waist similar to that which Jenny wore when off-duty in Jakkers or Manila. To ninety-nine out of a hundred people it looked like a tourist’s bumbag, but Mac knew it as a disguised handgun holster and he would rather face that head-on than have the bloke behind him for the rest of the morning.

As he speed-walked up behind the tail, Mac shifted to his four o’clock to get further into his blind spot. Three, two, one… Mac didn’t slow, walked at speed to his tail’s two o’clock as the heavyset man turned to his left to case Mac again. The guy’s torso tensed and he craned his neck slightly – all people did that when they expected to see something and didn’t.