Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

The hostess wandered by and Mac asked for a bottle of water. She brought him a Vittel and he sipped on it.

He’d often wondered how Jenny maintained her strength and good humour. Growing up on an orchard in western Victoria, her father had been a violent drunk, and while Jenny’s mother and younger sister went along with the program, Jenny couldn’t bow to it. From a young age, Jen made herself the target of her father’s violence, and she’d get the beatings and spend nights out in the barn, keeping out of harm’s way.

‘When he drank, he wanted respect,’ shrugged Jenny the fi rst time she told Mac about it, ‘but there was no way I could give him that.’

‘You couldn’t just play along?’ Mac had asked.

‘That’s what Mum wanted, but I’d say, “Why – to stop my own father punching me? Threatening me? Calling me a piece of shit?”’

That’s how Jenny had learned to see the world and the men who wandered around in it. Respect wasn’t a default setting for Jen. She’d spent long hours at the local swim club and water polo squad, staying away from the Old Man. Then one night, when she got home from swimming, her younger sister, Petra, came running out of the house in tears, her father close behind yelling something about his dinner.

Jenny had always been tall and willowy but in her fi rst year of high school, and with all the swimming, she’d become stronger in the shoulders, arms and legs. Something made her stand in front of Petra as her father charged after her.

‘Leave her alone,’ Jenny had yelled at him. ‘Pick on someone your own size!’

He’d walked up and punched Jenny fl ush on the jaw, sent her sprawling. When she told Mac this story, Jenny’s eyes took on a faraway look, as if she couldn’t quite explain how things went from bad to worse that night.

‘I was on my knees, shaking my head, probably concussed – he wasn’t a small guy – and I put my hands down to steady myself and my right hand went straight around a wrecking bar, nice big one too.’

The Old Man had come over to go on with it and Jenny swung the wrecking bar with two hands, like a baseball bat, and hit her father on the left kneecap. She’d recalled, ‘There was total silence for two seconds. He opened his mouth but no sound came out and he fell over like a tree going down.’

Jenny had cracked his patella.

‘He was moaning and groaning, and I stood up, threw the bar away and started walking down the driveway to the barn. I had a sleeping bag down there and everything.’

As she was walking, her sister screamed out, ‘Jenny!’ and when she turned she saw the fi rst fl ash from her Old Man’s rifl e and heard the slug pinging off the Massey-Ferguson. She ran across the home paddock and into the cherry orchards and kept running as the shots came out of the darkness.

The court acquitted her father and Jenny was sent to boarding school as an offi cial problem child. She’d barely talked to her family again and when her father died of cancer while she was studying at Monash University, she didn’t attend the funeral. One day Jenny had bumped into Petra in Brisbane, when they were both adults, and Petra still seemed to think that if Jen had kept her mouth shut and played along with their dad, everything would have been fi ne.

Jenny had grown through all that and Mac didn’t get much of the fallout from her childhood – with one exception: she was the only woman other than his mother ever to hit him. It was just after he’d fi nished a gig with Garvs in Jakarta back in ‘02. He’d had a few drinks after an operation, and then turned up to see Jen. But he’d forgotten to remove his Heckler from his belt and Jenny hit him on the head for that.

She put up with a lot from Mac but she wouldn’t tolerate a drunk with a fi rearm. And now she’d made it clear that she also had no tolerance for Mac having a second wife, even if it was in the line of duty.

The small whiteboard sign above the arrivals crowds simply said DAVIS and Mac made for it with his double suit bag and wheelie cabin luggage.

‘Edwin, how you doing, champ?’ said Mac, handing the suit bag to the Shangri-La driver, a well-groomed Filipino in a black chauffeur’s uniform and an Errol Flynn mo.

‘Good, thanks, Mr Richard – and how are you?’

‘Fit as a fox, thanks, mate.’

They made small talk as Edwin – something of an institution at the Shangri-La – navigated the black Mercedes-Benz S-class through the morning traffi c crush and fi lled him in on Indonesian politics.

‘SBY is good for country, but poor person don’t understand why it good,’ admitted Edwin. ‘Easy for, how you say, popular politician to promise anything to poor people.’

Mac gave a wry chuckle. Indonesia was in its fi rst full cycle of democratic government and they were realising that a reforming leader like Susilo Bambang Yudhuyono might be good in the medium term, but such a president made himself vulnerable to populist demagogues. ‘Sounds like Australia, mate. No difference.’

They took over an hour to get to the Lar, where Edwin took them around the back, into the hotel garage, allowing Mac to enter from the porter’s entrance.

The vast lobby and lounge area was busy with Malaysian businessmen, American oil guys and Aussie miners. Phones trilled, front desk people slapped thirteen-page bills on the counter, and Hong Kong bankers’ wives wandered behind porters’ trolleys laden with pink alligator-hide luggage sets.

Edwin hooked the Cutler suit bag on a porter’s trolley and Mac fl icked him some greenbacks, smiled and said, ‘Take it easy, mate.’

Edwin had once been a cop in Manila and was very useful to have on your side in a place like Jakkers.

‘Cheers,’ replied Edwin, trying to get his best Strine accent into the delivery.

Mac cased the lobby, looking for eyes, clothes and gaits that didn’t belong. There was a large easel alongside the massive front desk advertising the Powering Asia conference and welcoming delegates.

He waited for the senior manager guy and moved forward, clocked the name-tag and gave him a wink.

‘How’s it going, Steve?’

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Davis,’ he said, sliding his passport and Visa card across the black marble top. ‘I’ll check in now for my wife as well, though she’s not here yet.’

Steve opened the passport, looked at his screen and smiled.

‘Welcome, Mr Davis. Mrs Davis checked in twenty minutes ago so we won’t require your passport.’

Mac baulked for a split second, then recovered. ‘Bloody women, eh Steve? The one time they’re not late it’s because they’re early.’

Steve laughed, handed him a cardboard folder with a door card in it. ‘You’re in suite fi fteen-oh-eight, fi fteenth fl oor. One of the porters will take you up,’ he said, and clicked his fi ngers.

Mac stood outside the room, took the Cutler suit bag, and paid off the porter, saying he wanted to surprise his wife. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he got himself into character. He hadn’t been on an op for almost two years, and he hadn’t done the Fred-and-Wilma for six or seven. All he knew about his ‘wife’ was that she was a former pro who was now also freelancing. That, and the fact that her code name was Primrose.

The porter rattled away to the elevator bank and, as soon as he was out of sight, Mac knocked three times, then leaned on the door so his hand was over the spy hole.

A female voice from behind the door said, ‘Sentinel,’ and Mac replied, ‘Primrose.’

The door swung away from Mac, revealing the new Mrs Davis.

She wasn’t a dog and she wasn’t a primrose. She was a product of MI6 and her name was Diane Ellison.