Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

‘What do you mean?’

‘Delegated it to those youngsters. Chester’s been hitting the bloody roof.’

Mac moved to the bathroom, shut the door quietly and sat on the closed toilet seat in the dark, his heart thumping in his temples. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘Chester called me, about eleven o’clock. Said you’d taken his best girl and then reassigned her to a joint public affairs effort with the AFP without consulting him. He’s ropeable.’

‘Mate, I just put the best team in there. They still answer to me, unless you want me riding a keyboard all day.’

‘I told him yours was always meant to be an oversight role, that you were never going to actually write the cops’ press releases for them.’

‘Am I in the shit?’

‘Nah,’ said Joe. ‘It’s just Chester going off. I mean, you ever heard him swear?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I asked him if he’d taken his complaints up with you yet, and he said, “No, Joe.” And when I asked him why not, he said, “Because he’s lying on his back snoring like a fucking bear!”’

Mac laughed weakly and rubbed his face, trying to wake up. His brain buzzed with fatigue. ‘Okay, mate, so Handmaiden, what’s the drum?’

‘Same secondment to the Indons, through BAIS. Same op.’

Mac felt the UN dream receding. ‘New York’s not going to happen, is it, Joe? I mean, Handmaiden is one of those things that could drag on for years.’

‘So get out there, mate, do your thing,’ said Joe, sounding genuinely conciliatory. ‘If anyone can bring in that little Akbar weasel, it’s you.’

Mac sulked in the back seat of the black LandCruiser, mulling over his career as they sped for the military air base behind Bali International.

Freddi and his driver, Purni, were silent in front and were probably knackered too.

Mac felt like writing a memo to someone saying it wasn’t fair, that he’d already planned Operation Handmaiden and successfully executed the fi rst and most diffi cult stage: acquiring Ahmed al Akbar without signs of a struggle and exfi ltrating him covertly. That was the Australian end, a daring and dangerous snatch that had been carried out almost perfectly by Team 4 and ASIS. It wasn’t right that the Indons had lost the bloke and were now calling him back to fi nd him again. Mac would love to see how Maddo and his boys at Team 4 would react if they were copied in on this latest development. Mac was also annoyed with himself that he hadn’t followed up on the face he’d seen in the pantry when he was doing the snatch. It now looked as though the person had been Samir. And if Samir was working with Hassan, it would explain why Akbar had been sprung so fast.

Freddi turned in his seat. ‘Okay for food, McQueen? Water?’

Mac shrugged, petulant. Couldn’t help it.

‘If I was you, McQueen, I’d be annoyed too.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Mac.

‘Yeah. I’d be thinking that I went out, caught that little bomber, now the army gone and lost him.’ Freddi shook his head, like it was the most serious thing in the world.

‘Freddi, I’m here so I’m already enlisted, okay?’ said Mac, annoyed.

‘You can stop with the charm offensive.’

Freddi turned back to the windscreen. ‘Breakfast at the base, then we’ll move. Gonna be a long day, okay?’

Mac rubbed his hands down the legs of his overalls, turning it into a stretch. ‘Sure, Freddi – let’s roll.’

They pulled in behind the commercial airport buildings six minutes later, drove down a cleared driveway lined with weeds, and slowed for the base police checkpoint. Purni snapped something at Freddi while looking in his side mirror and they stopped thirty metres short of the pillbox.

‘Your boyfriend’s here,’ said Freddi, leaning down to look at his own side mirror, his hand reaching for the black SIG Sauer on his right hip.

Ari walked along the passenger side of the LandCruiser, hands up, keeping a good distance from Freddi’s door. The Russian lifted his trop shirt to show a bare belly and no holster-bag. Smart guy, thought Mac. Been in South-East Asia long enough to learn some manners.

Freddi released his gun and smiled out of his open window. ‘Ari!

What can I do for you?’

‘I am needing to speak with McQueen, please,’ he said, pointing at Mac’s door.

Freddi turned to Mac. ‘Want to speak? Don’t have to.’

Mac lifted the door latch and joined Ari. They shook and the Russian moved further from the Cruiser.

‘You ever sleep, Ari?’ asked Mac.

‘Only when I am with woman,’ Ari chuckled. ‘Timing no good.’

‘Heard anything on Hassan?’

Ari did the Russian shrug, a less dramatic version than the Javanese but more dismissive. ‘I am leaving tonight, but I feel we must stay

– how you say it – in the touch.’

‘I told you, Ari, I’ve never been on Hassan – not my end.’

‘Yes, but still you were with Atomic Energy Agency when this Khan was stopped, yes?’ said Ari. ‘And the Indonesians are using you, so this is now Samir as well, yes?’

Mac gave him the look and raised his eyebrow.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Ari, knowing he was pushing the friendship too far. ‘But too many of the secrets when we are working for same thing?

Not so good, yes?’

‘Where are you headed, Ari?’

The Russian shrugged.

‘Come on, mate, too many secrets, yes?’

Ari put his hands on his hips, looked over Mac’s shoulder, nodded slightly, and then looked back. ‘Okay. Sumatra.’

‘Not Java?’

‘No, McQueen. Sumatra.’

‘Where in Sumatra? It’s a big place.’

‘I can’t say this, you know that.’

‘Heard anything more about your colleague?’ asked Mac, thinking Ari looked a little washed out.

‘No – he is dead or he is being, umm, held,’ said Ari, slumping a little. In the spy game it was unusual for anyone to use the word torture, in the same way soldiers didn’t like directly referring to death, but Mac saw the stress in the Russian’s eyes and knew what he was saying.

Deciding if he relinquished some information it might bring some other revelations back his way, Mac said, ‘Okay, Ari. We had eyes on Samir, yesterday.’

Ari nodded.

‘It was me – I saw him,’ said Mac.

‘You were there?’ said Ari, tensing. ‘On this JI ship?’

‘Yeah, mate. Thing is, Ahmed al Akbar was with him.’

Ari went completely still for a couple of seconds, looked Mac in the eye. ‘These people are al-Qaeda, yes? And you are letting these fuckers go?’

‘Mate, I’ve said too much. Your turn.’

As Ari tried to fi nd the right words and correct level of illumination, Mac turned and saw Freddi tap his G-Shock.

‘I let him go now, Freddi – Tuhan memberkati,’ said Ari.

Freddi looked away. If you wished God’s blessings on a Javanese, it wasn’t good manners for him to reply with grumpiness.

‘I think we are looking for the same crew, yes?’ said Ari. ‘Hassan and Samir.’

Mac was getting irritated. ‘Hassan and Samir, yes. But Akbar?

Akbar is Osama’s bagman -‘

The words fell off the end of his sentence as Mac realised what he was saying.

‘You see,’ said Ari, ‘why Samir and Akbar are on same ship?’

Mac nodded, things becoming clearer.

‘It very expensive,’ said Ari, ‘for nuclear device.’

It was a clear night as the Indonesian Huey chugged north-west. The host military had a choice whether to tell their foreign intelligence partners where they were going, and the Indon navy had decided not to.

Mac, Freddi and Purni all tried to sleep in the throbbing racket of the Huey, a Vietnam-era helo now made under licence in Indonesia.