Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

It was twilight in the street outside Tubes when they left. Jenny play-punched Mac on the left shoulder, said, ‘Take it easy,’ and walked over to a white Holden Commodore wagon with two male cops sitting on the hood, the tall one talking into a radio.

Mac’s phone rang and as he answered he noticed the short male cop bumping his mate in the arm and both of them jumping off the front of the Commodore, running their hands through their hair.

It was Ari, wanting to talk. Mac said he’d see him in fi ve.

Ari was sitting in a blue Toyota Camry sedan, about two-thirds along Poppies Gang. It was dark and Mac walked the north side of the street fi rst, getting eyes on Ari, seeing his stance, looking for clues.

Anxious? Alone? Nondescript van nearby? Mac came back on the south side of the street.

There were few people around, locals mostly. Most of the Aussies and Kiwis were at Bali International Airport in Denpasar where AFP, Foreign Affairs and ASIS were debriefi ng and processing every one of them before they could get on a plane. According to Jenny they had thirty AFP agents with computer servers and a massive internet connection doing nothing but downloading pictures and video from the tourists’ cameras before they made immigration.

Unarmed and cagey, Mac walked towards Ari’s car and then walked past, looking for anyone who might be hiding. He kept going, stopped behind a palm tree, cased the area and walked to the Toyota, opened the rear door and got in.

‘Kuta Puri,’ said Ari without preamble, nodding his head across the road. ‘You might be interested.’

Mac smelled stale cigarettes and saw a six-pack of large Evian bottles on the fl oor behind the reclined driver’s seat. It was a stake-out car. Mac had been there, done that. He looked across the road to where the Kuta Puri Bungalows sat dispersed among stands of palms and frangipani trees. There were strategic lights in the bushes and he could see some citronella fl ares burning further into the compound in what Mac knew to be the pool and communal barbecue area.

‘What are we looking for, mate?’

‘Hassan,’ mumbled Ari, not taking his eyes off the Kuta Puri.

‘Hassan Ali – Pakistani intelligence.’

Mac looked at him, trying to recall Hassan. He’d never worked in the subcontinent and some of the names weren’t familiar.

‘This Hassan,’ said Ari, ‘he’s in here with the – how you say? – the crew.’

Mac looked through the side window to the Puri, but couldn’t see anything except trees refl ecting a purple sunset. ‘Pakistani intelligence.

So you mean ISI?’

‘Nah, nah, nah,’ said Ari, nodding. ‘He was, and then no more.’

Mac felt a creeping sensation up his neck and spun sideways to see where Ari’s backup was coming from. ‘Where’s your backup, Ari?’ asked Mac, grabbing the door handle.

‘He’s following these other crews,’ shrugged the Russian. ‘In Java, yes?’

Mac paused, intrigued. He wanted the story before he did the Harold. ‘Ari, why were you following me this morning?’

Ari shrugged, grabbed his smokes.

‘Okay, let me put it this way,’ said Mac. ‘Why did you stand out there like a beacon, wanting to get made?’

‘Because,’ said Ari, putting a cigarette between his teeth, ‘I wanted to stay close.’

‘Why me?’

Ari exhaled a plume of blue smoke, picked something off his tongue. ‘Because the very small bird tells me you were coming in from Manila. I thought we could cooperate.’

Mac could feel his adrenaline rising. ‘Don’t screw with me, mate -

I’m only a second away from going,’ he said, pulling the door handle up.

Ari put up a hand. ‘Okay, okay.’

‘Spill. Now,’ snapped Mac, at the end of his fuse.

Ari sighed. ‘My controller told me you were the IAEA. The coincidence was too great, yes?’

Mac’s mind raced. A couple of years ago, he’d done a rotation at the International Atomic Energy Agency – a UN-backed authority that controlled the use and misuse of fi ssionable material, including enriched uranium and plutonium. Mac’s rotation had occurred at a time when two things were attracting major interest from the IAEA: fi rstly, Japan had developed a uranium-enrichment facility and ICBM technology, and had signed on to the US-Australian Theatre Missile Defence system. At the same time, the infamous Doctor A.Q. Khan

– the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist – had been busted selling uranium-enrichment technologies and nuclear bomb designs to Libya, North Korea and Iran. Meantime, Australia had dropped its reticence about selling yellowcake uranium to the world and Aussie mining companies were actively seeking long-term supply contracts with India and China, among others.

So the late 1990s had been an interesting time at the IAEA, with lots of spies and special forces, but Mac still wasn’t putting the whole scenario together.

‘Coincidence?’ said Mac, very slowly.

‘With this bombings, and Hassan is here, and they send in McQueen,’ started Ari, before movement near the Kuta Puri caught his attention.

Three men emerged from the palms of Kuta Puri. They were dark-skinned, dressed in chinos and trop shirts which, by the look of them, covered handguns carried on the hip. They were built and moved like pros and Mac ducked down as the crew reached a silver Suzuki Vitara, looked for eyes and got in. The driver had a big helmet of black hair, a heavily muscled physique and moved with his hips, like a gorilla. Mac stayed low, his heart racing, feeling naked without a fi rearm.

When the Vitara had gone past them in the opposite direction, towards Legian Street, Ari sprung upright and started the Camry.

Mac should have got out, gone back to the forward command post, supervised a bunch of press releases, tried to make peace with Jen.

Instead, he crawled through the space between the front seats and belted himself in as Ari swung the Camry into a U-turn, pulled the car around to face east and hit the gas.

‘Mate, I need something, yeah?’ said Mac as the transmission screamed through second gear.

Ari gestured towards the glove box, all concentration on the road ahead. Mac fi shed out a black holster-bag and extracted a big, black Russian P9 handgun. Checking mechanically for load, mag and safety, he put it back in the bag between his thighs, where Ari also had his, and fi xed his eyes on the Vitara.

They moved fi fty metres behind the Vitara and kept contact.

Suddenly the Vitara signalled a right-hander and before Mac could fi nish saying ‘Square the triangle’, Ari had already turned right and taken the Camry down a side alley. The Russian was an excellent driver, knew his craft. Dodging rubbish bins and stray cats, they came out on another street, looked to their left, saw a fl ash of the Vitara and then accelerated across the intersection.

They made another parallel route and when they got to the end, there was no more dirt alley. Ari turned left and then right and got behind the Vitara again. Most pros being tailed used counter-surveillance for a couple of minutes before they assumed they were clear. It wasn’t lazy, it was human nature.

They settled in behind the Suzuki and backed off to between eighty and a hundred metres as they headed for Denpasar. Fed up with the cloak and dagger, Mac decided to rile Ari. ‘Mate, I’m in this now. You want to tell me who this Hassan prick is?’

‘Maybe he made the Sari bombing,’ said Ari, eyes on the road ahead.

‘A Pakistani?’ scoffed Mac. ‘Come on, mate!’

‘No, no,’ insisted Ari. ‘How do I say rightly? Hassan is the one who is working for the Dr Khan.’

‘ Khan?!’ said Mac, shrieking slightly.

‘Yes, he sells the atomic bomb, fuck his mother.’