Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

‘No, no, it’s okay,’ sighed Grant. ‘That’s the fi rst honest thing I’ve heard anyone say about this entire fucking process.’

Mac waited, something catching his eye in the background.

‘I have breakfast at seven,’ said Alex Grant. ‘Can we meet?’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Mac, handing over his card before his attention was taken by a waiter on the other side of the ballroom.

The lights of Jakarta seemed to sprawl forever as Mac stood in front of the vista window at the end of the living area, briefi ng Tony Davidson from his Nokia. It was 9.16 pm local, which meant it was 11.16 pm in Perth, where Davidson worked from his corporate front offi ces.

Once an op was underway, Davidson and Mac totally lived it and were considered Old School in that regard. If getting it right meant taking calls when you were lying in bed or drinking with your wife, that’s what you did.

Intelligence outfi ts often ran themselves low on good fi eld guys, not because the recruits didn’t have the smarts but because they didn’t have the stamina for an infi ltration operation that could last two days or two months. Those people were routinely reassigned to a desk, to management or SIGINT analysis – something with a forty-hour week.

People like Mac and Davidson weren’t the world’s smartest people, but they had the ticker for getting immersed in something for months at a time.

‘That’s great, mate,’ said Davidson after Mac fi nished his briefi ng on the Alex Grant meeting. ‘Bloke can almost smell the money – a bit of greed goes a long way.’

‘I’m meeting him tomorrow morning, but I don’t think I’ll crunch him – he’s already coming along,’ said Mac.

‘Your call, Macca,’ said Davidson. ‘But remember: the old ways are the old ways because they work.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Mac.

Under the old ways, Mac would not have allowed Alex Grant to name the meeting time and place. If you wanted to draw a person closer and eventually own them, you always changed the meeting slightly. Mac should have told Grant he’d meet him in the lobby lounge at seven before they went in for breakfast, saying, I have something I want you to see, or some bullshit like that. But Bennelong was really the Trojan Horse for NIME, and if Bennelong was going to come across with a tease and a fl irt, then Mac was inclined to go with that.

‘Another thing,’ said Mac, not quite knowing how to raise it.

‘I clocked some surveillance tonight, at the reception. Primrose saw it too.’

‘Friends of ours?’

‘None of the usual,’ said Mac, ruling out spies from BAIS, BIN, CIA, MI6 and the Philippines’ NICA. ‘I’m not sure they’re locals – bit too intense.’

‘How many?’

‘Two – that we saw. Males; Malay, Indian perhaps.’

‘Who was the subject? You or Bennelong?’

‘Can’t be sure. We weren’t tailed into the lobby or up to our room so I’m thinking that Bennelong has some minders?’

‘Sounds right,’ said Davidson. ‘If NIME are doing what we think they’re doing, then they’ll be keeping tabs, see who’s sniffi ng around.’

‘That’s why I don’t want to crunch the bloke. He thinks I can help him and I’m going to play to that.’

‘It would help to know who these watchers are.’

‘Well, yeah. I need something more on NIME,’ said Mac. ‘Those profi les in the fi le were fronts, I’m sure of it.’

‘Reckon?’ said Davidson.

‘Yeah, and I’ve only got library-level access on the fi rm’s intranet

– can you get me something more?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Davidson.

As Mac put down the phone he saw Diane take a bottle of wine from the mini-bar and head for her room.

Looking out over the sprawling mass of west Jakarta, Mac thought about that waiter he’d seen. He’d been athletically built and moved like a soldier, although he’d tried to conceal it with a baggy hotel tunic. It wasn’t just that the bloke was watching Mac and Grant with a different intensity to the waiter scanning a room for a raised glass. No, there was something strangely familiar about that waiter. He couldn’t put his fi nger on it. The face? The hair? Or was it the gait?

Faces, eyes and hair could trigger connections but it was gait that really formed code deep in the brain. Scientists at the Shin Bet academy in Tel Aviv had concluded that humans were reliant on gait analysis to identify friend and foe because before the advent of language, anthropologically very recent, that’s all they had to go on. Even from a distance the human brain could pick up if someone was a warrior, injured, tired, aggressive, male or female, strong or weak.

Mac knew that waiter’s walk, but couldn’t place it.

Behind him the sofa squeaked slightly. ‘Pay extra for the view,’ said Diane, who wasn’t a great fan of Jakarta’s vistas.

Mac turned, took her in and struggled to keep it tight. She was sitting on the edge of the sofa in white bra and panties, rubbing lotion into her tanned legs. Looking up, her sapphire orbs sparkled like she was taking the piss. She knew he was married but she couldn’t help herself. Mac hated that and, in spite of himself, he felt his jaw clench, searching for the best way to tell an ex-lover that her charms were still working but he was no longer a buyer.

‘Look, Diane -‘

‘Yes, Richard?’

Diane was an extraordinarily manipulative person. To offset her own betrayal of Mac with Peter Garrison, she was highlighting that even when he was on the verge of proposing marriage to her, he let her call him Richard rather than coming clean. She was daring him to take the high moral ground, an unstable place for a couple of pros.

‘Got some more info on the NIME guys – the real principals,’ said Mac, trying to take his eyes off her.

‘Want to talk about Michael?’ she said, knowing that it would irritate him to hear Vitogiannis referred to by his fi rst name.

‘Sure – did he hit on you?’ said Mac.

She chuckled. ‘Of course not, darling. He saw how devoted I was to my husband.’

Without taking her eyes off him, she started with the lotion on her belly.

‘So that’s it?’ he asked.

‘No, Michael’s very excited about the deal. He says Australia has the right technology and expertise for Asia during an infrastructure build-out, and he thinks NIME is an exciting partner.’

‘So, he’s legit?’

Diane looked at him. ‘He said something about how the Australian government weren’t coming to the party, or something like that?’

Nodding, Mac pushed. ‘So he was open about it all?’

‘He didn’t lie, except for when he said partner and partnership. Why would he lie about that?’

‘Because he’s got no interest in a partnership with anybody. He’s a venture capitalist – he wants to exit, wants to be bought out.’

Mac was getting really annoyed, uncomfortable. Then he smelled the liquid she was rubbing, and he lost it. Before he knew what was going on, he was in front of the elevator banks, breathing shallow, gulping, banging on the ‘down’ arrow and muttering to himself.

He got to the bar by the lagoon and settled into a bar chair where he could scan the comings and goings out of the hotel lobby. Positioning himself so he wasn’t looking straight into the security camera above the top shelf single malts, Mac looked for eyes, but could only see animated businessmen. Exhaling, he let the tension run out of him.

‘Evening, Mr Davis,’ said the barman.

Mac smiled, realised he still had his name-tag on. He unclasped it, slid it across the bar and, looking at the bloke’s name-tag, asked for a beer, and Bundy on a rock.

The beer arrived and Mac said, ‘Thanks, Clyde,’ then drank from the long neck and felt its coolness rush down his throat. He remembered the days when he was dating Diane between Sydney and Jakarta. It had been early summer in Sydney, and on a beautiful Saturday morning the woman he’d fallen in love with had wanted to go swimming at a beach. Mac had suggested Bondi or Manly, something with a bit of oomph, something to put the willies up a Pommie girl. But Diane wanted to go to Camp Cove, a harbour beach in Sydney’s east with no waves and a lot of fl oating rubbish.