Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

‘Gotta watch that, mate,’ said Mac.

The tail snapped back, eyes wide through his sunnies, his hands dropping straight to the pouch.

‘Lotta thieves round here, champ – good money for a handgun,’ added Mac.

They looked into one another’s eyes through their sunnies. The tail was Mac’s height but had another fi ve kilos on Mac’s one-oh-fi ve. He was a front rower to Mac’s centre. Mac glimpsed a POLRI on the other side of the barrier and looked back at the tail. The bloke’s eyes darted to the POLRI, and then Mac saw the tension run out of that thick neck as he smiled, showing lots of small teeth and a ton of gum.

‘Ah, Australian!’ said the bloke with a thick Russian accent.

‘Einstein, right?’

The Russian threw his head back, laughed at the sky. ‘You weren’t supposed to be seeing me, fuck the mother!’

They sat at the window table of a bar on Legian Street, Ari – the Russian – with a Tiger beer, Mac with a glass of Pellegrino and a chunk of lime.

‘So, Ari, you’re a little out of your way?’

Ari chewed on gum, looked out at the diminished tourist fl ow on Legian, did one of those Russian shrugs that Mac always took to be the start of a fi b. The Russian intelligence services had an enormous presence in East Asia and the subcontinent, but their activities out of Jakarta were usually confi ned to countering the Chinese, Japanese and Indians along with shadowing the Americans and British. Mac and his peers from Indonesian intelligence and the CIA knew that the Ruskies were around but weren’t used to confronting them.

‘Indonesia is such an interesting country, don’t you fi nd, McQueen?’

Ari had used his real name but Mac let it go, since for this investigation he was operating under Alan McQueen, his card the standard DFAT goods with the gold bunting and the south Jakarta address of the Australian Embassy. In the general run of things, intelligence people honoured each other’s aliases and to use their real name unbidden could be seen as aggression.

‘Bali got very interesting last night,’ said Mac. ‘Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

Ari paused, allowed the translation to sink in, then laughed. ‘I see, I see.’

Mac fl inched as Ari reached for the holster-bag so the Russian slowed his hand, turned his fi ngers into a pincer and pulled the side fl ap open. Mac saw a packet of cigarettes and Ari pulled them out along with a cheap red plastic lighter.

‘Guess what I’m saying, Ari, is that you’re here for the bombing.

And since it looks like my country is going to be in a joint investigation with the Indons, I’m going to be getting a lot of information you’d like to get your hands on.’

Ari nodded as he took his fi rst draw and then held the cigarette upright between his thumb and index fi nger. He had a wide face with big slabs of cheekbone and a surprisingly childish mouth that moved constantly into new emotions. His eyes were ice-pale and he had a medium-sized gold crucifi x dangling beneath his trop shirt on a tanned hairless chest. Mac saw the crucifi x had the Orthodox Church titulus of INBI across the portion where the short plank crossed the upright. On a Catholic cross it would be INRI.

‘We might have to be talking, yes?’ said Ari, smoke drifting out of his nose. ‘You are scratching my back and I then am scratching your back, yes?’

Mac hesitated, and then put his hand out. They shook and swapped mobile phone numbers before Mac got up to leave.

‘If you’re working with the Indonesian police,’ said Ari, ‘perhaps you can tell me: are they checking passports?’

Mac was about to say, Why the hell would they be checking passports? But he just shrugged, said he’d fi nd out.

Walking into the heat, Mac buzzed with what he’d just found out.

The Russians didn’t believe the bombers were locals either.

After changing into clean civvies, Mac headed downstairs and Julie grabbed him as he walked into the hotel lobby. For someone who never seemed to rest, she had a clean, fresh look. Her dark drill skirt was pressed and her white short-sleeved blouse was free of the dust that everyone else picked up in Kuta.

‘Chester needs you, Mr McQueen,’ said Julie as Mac stopped, ‘for signing the Memorandum of Understanding with the Indon National Police.’

She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and walked.

Mac followed. ‘By the way, Julie…’

She looked over her shoulder.

‘Call me Mac, huh? All this “Mister” stuff will just get everyone confused.’

She smiled, got to a dark door and leaned on it. ‘Okay, Mac. The big one in the suit is from the Indonesian President’s offi ce and the one with the fruit salad is Indonesian National Police. It’s now a joint op and DFAT has carriage from the Aussie side.’

‘And the MOU?’ asked Mac.

‘Joint AFP and INP. We’re doing forensics and DVI; the Indons are doing the investigation.’

Mac smiled. ‘Good thinking. That Chester’s not just a pretty face, huh?’

She laughed. ‘It gets better. The MOU precludes any foreign investigations and the INP will write the fi nal report. Non-negotiable, no dissenting opinions.’

One of Julie’s phones rang and she stepped away from the door, motioning for Mac to go through. There were fi fteen people in a small business centre. The ones with any clout sat around the oval wooden treaty table while the lawyers leaned down and pointed at documents with silver Parkers and black Montblancs.

Chester rose and introduced Mac and the Indonesians at the table all smiled and did their little bows at him. Despite being a bit of a dick, Chester was in his element in a diplomatic forum.

‘Alan, just to bring you up to speed,’ he said, with genial authority,

‘we now have an MOU with the Republic of Indonesia to run the investigation and associated logistics as a joint operation.’

Mac saw that one group at the table, the AFP representatives, were conspicuously not smiling and wondered what kind of arguments had erupted in the back rooms before the cops conceded it was now a DFAT show.

‘Mr McQueen will have overall sign-off on the public affairs side,’ said Chester, smiling like he was ingratiating a boyfriend with someone’s father. ‘I think we’re all in agreement on the need for a single interaction point with the media, yes?’

Afterwards Mac lunched with Chester in the main restaurant. They ate quickly and moved across the basics. The AFP would do all the heavy lifting, with the support of the Australian Defence Force. The cops would build the forward command post, and Defence would organise the chow tents, sleeping quarters, toilets and showers for the two hundred Aussies expected to descend on Bali in the next few days.

Of most signifi cance to Mac was the fact that the Indonesian National Police would write the only report. If Mac knew Indonesia even half as well as he thought he did that report would never be released to the Indonesian media and perhaps not even to their parliament. The INP answered directly to the Indonesian President’s offi ce, and that’s where the report would disappear.

‘Doesn’t leave much for us, mate,’ quipped Mac.

Chester smiled with the superiority of the diplomat as he chewed on his tuna. ‘I see our role as more the project manager – thought-leadership, if you will.’

Mac gagged slightly on his veal. If Jenny was here she’d be in the bloke’s face for that sort of comment. She had no time for men and their endless extra layers of management.

‘You okay, McQueen?’ asked Chester as Mac drank iced water and thumped himself in his still-tender sternum.

‘Good as gold, thanks,’ Mac spluttered.

As he put his glass down Mac saw John Morris, the AFP’s senior counter-terrorism bloke, patting his chest pocket like he was going for a ciggie as he ducked out of the restaurant. Mac got up to go, but turned back to Chester. ‘By the way, mate, I’ll need an assistant.’