Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

Ari arced up, totally interested. ‘Tiger! I love the tigers.’

‘I’m just checking on her now,’ said Mari. ‘You can come and help me if you want.’

Ari got to his feet and they disappeared down the line of cages while Mac found his Heckler and checked the phones. Then he wandered down to the tiger cage and stopped as he saw Mari put her arm around Ari’s shoulder and whisper in his ear. He was about to say something smart when he saw Ari’s back heaving.

While Ari drove the silver Nissan Patrol to the Polonia, Mac fronted him with a simple choice. Pulling out the folded papers he’d grabbed from the Pulau airfi eld, he waved them in the Russian’s face. ‘Mate, these are yours to read, maybe copy – but we’ll have a quick chat fi rst, okay?’

Ari looked at him, looked at the bunch of papers. ‘Chat?’

‘Yeah,’ said Mac. ‘I don’t have the full picture. I don’t even know what I’m doing here, and some bastard is going to start with the explanations.’

‘Me?’

‘No one else in the room.’

Ari looked resigned. ‘What are these papers? Where did you get them?’

‘Know that airfi eld where Hassan’s team tried to land yesterday?’

‘And the Kopassus chased them off?’

‘Yep – I went out there and checked it out,’ said Mac. ‘These are the only papers remaining from a building that had been deliberately destroyed by fi re. And, Ari, I reckon the arsonists came back after they were chased off by Kopassus.’

‘So important, yes?’ said Ari, clearly interested.

‘Important enough so that someone tells me what the fuck’s going on.’

‘Okay,’ said Ari, fl ustered. ‘Ask me, but maybe I cannot say, yes?’

Mac started simple. ‘Was that a nuclear device in Kuta?’

‘I don’t know, McQueen. These JI camel-fuckers have been trying to increase their – how you say – their fi re strength…’

‘Firepower,’ said Mac.

‘Yes, increase their fi repower. They’ve been trying for a year. So they have this moneys from the al-Qaeda fuckers and they are speaking to many organisation. One of these organisation is the Dr Khan, and his chief of operations is Hassan.’

‘So, Kuta?’

‘You see, McQueen,’ said Ari, weighing his words, ‘Hassan has the access to many military application, including – how they say?

– CBRNE. You know this?’

Mac’s skin crawled. An acronym for weapons of mass destruction, CBRNE stood for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and enhanced Explosive. ‘Yes, Ari, I’ve heard of it.’

Ari shrugged as he stopped at a red light and lit a cigarette. ‘So what we know is that Hassan crew was in Kuta with the JI team of Abu Samir. Akbar was there too, but sailed before the bombings. What was it did they detonate? I was tailing you to understand this, yes?’

‘Sure.’

‘You and I both think that Paddy’s Bar was local terror bomb, perhaps ammonium nitrate or potassium chlorate, yes?’ said Ari.

Mac nodded.

‘But Sari Club – too big, too much destruction, hole in road much too big for fertiliser bomb. Hassan has access to enhanced military explosive, and he also has access to mini-nuke. What exploded in Kuta? That’s what I wanted you to help me fi nd out.’

Mac tried something else. ‘What are the Pakistanis doing in Indonesia?’

Ari wound down his window, letting in warm air, and fl icked his ash. ‘The Pakistanis are dangerous. Their military and their intelligence created the Taliban as a way of controlling Afghani opium production, you know this, yes?’

‘Yep. It’s not good.’

‘It is commercial business,’ said Ari. ‘The al-Qaeda have the money and the JI want the bombs. So Hassan gives bomb to JI and get moneys from Osama. Or, they give guns and power to Taliban, take money from Americans for the opium.’

Ari fl icked the ciggie as he pulled into the Polonia. ‘The Americans and the British think they are so smart allowing Pakistan to do this, but Russia will eventually have politicians who will not take this shit from the Pakistanis. It is in the history.’

Mac stood in the shower, thought about what Ari had said. It fi lled in some but not all of the holes. He dried off and got dressed while Ari copied the documents with his mini-scanner – a device the size of a highlighter. Mac had withheld the page with the blue ballpoint N W scrawl. Didn’t know why. Just a habit for secrets, perhaps.

Mac’s Service Nokia went off. Freddi Gardjito would be pulling up outside in fi fteen minutes. As Mac signed off, the clean Nokia trilled and he walked into the kitchenette area and answered.

‘Hi Joe,’ he said, then brought the other man up to speed: the soldier in the tree, the fact that Sumatra was shut down, the documents and the arson at the airfi eld. ‘Akbar’s dead,’ said Mac, ‘but Hassan and Samir are still on the run.’

‘So what’s next, mate?’

‘Joining BAIS in a few minutes. Something’s cooking.’

‘Be careful, McQueen, okay? It’s enough to observe and report.’

Mac made the usual noises, but they both knew what was expected of him. There were times when observation wasn’t enough and you needed to snatch a bloke, bring him in, get him talking. Or you needed to turn a person, get them working the other side of the road.

Joe knew all about that. He’d turned and run a very high-level offi cer in the Japanese nuclear program of the mid-1990s.

The Japanese had been building ICBMs and space-control/re-entry systems, and telling their neighbours they were developing their M-5 and J-1 rockets to launch satellites. At the same time their enrichment activities included a fast-breeder reactor that produced weapons-grade plutonium. When Japan signed an MOU in 1999 committing itself to the American exo-atmospheric Theatre Missile Defense system, the penny fi nally dropped in the East Asian neighbourhood and North Korea had every excuse it needed to develop its own nukes.

So Joe Imbruglia had ensured that Australia knew about Japan’s intentions before anyone else in Asia, and with that knowledge made sure that Australia was dealt into the Theatre Missile Defense system or TMD – and all the joint-development contracts with the Americans that went with it. Joe Imbruglia had become integral to Australian intelligence’s Nuke Desk and he was a star.

Joe was winding it up when something fl ashed into Mac’s mind, a piece of the puzzle that was trying to come to light, a thread that connected Joe to Kuta and to Hassan. The Japanese fast-breeder was notable in intelligence circles because the plutonium it produced was perfect for weapons miniaturisation. Essentially, a plutonium core the size of a tennis ball could be surrounded by a compact detonation system and the whole device could fi t inside a military backpack. It was also known as a mini-nuke.

Joe’s running of Mac started to make sense. He’d let Mac build a fantasy scenario about leaking word to the tango community that Akbar had turned traitor, but was Joe really running a nuclear counter-espionage operation?

Mac controlled his voice, and decided to give it a go. ‘Joe – why me?’

Joe sighed. ‘ McQueen! ‘

‘Come on, Joe.’

‘You’re taping this, aren’t you?’

‘This is the clean Nokia. And you called me.’

‘Look, mate, this is turning into a shit-fi ght – best you can do is help the Indonesians put these people away, okay?’ said Joe, sounding frazzled.

‘I need more,’ Mac insisted.

‘Like?’

‘Like, I haven’t been a part of the Nuke Desk since the INVO shit

– but I’m chasing Hassan.’

‘Jesus, mate. You honestly think Canberra would send their pipe-biters after Hassan and Samir?’

Mac laughed. The Nuke Desk was overloaded with highly educated theorists, a couple of whom liked to munch on non-loaded, unlit briar pipes while they held forth.