Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

‘So where do I connect Naveed?’ asked Mac.

‘Hmm,’ said Benny, clearly reluctant to get into it. ‘You heard of a bloke called Hassan Ali?’

Mac almost choked on his beer. ‘Yeah, mate – um, that’s why I’m here,’ he spluttered, the acrid suds going up the back of his nose.

‘Really?’ asked Benny, eyes narrowing. ‘Might have told me that, mate.’

‘Sorry, Ben,’ said Mac, shifting his weight. ‘Maybe I didn’t explain properly. My due-diligence partner was shot by the Hassan crew. That’s why I’m a little beyond my initial brief. I’m, um, this is not -‘

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, mate. Soon as I saw the hair and the mo I fi gured you’d gone off-road,’ said Benny, blowing out smoke and moving towards the balcony. There was an ashtray on an outside table but he hesitated before he put his head out, casing the buildings beside the colonial building. ‘Weren’t followed, were you, Macca?’

‘Nah, mate.’

‘I’m serious,’ snapped Benny, stubbing his smoke. ‘Were you followed?”

Mac shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Because we got a little problem here, mate,’ said Benny, grabbing at another smoke and lighting it. ‘Not wired?’

Mac shook his head, took a shallow sip of the Carlsberg. ‘What’s up, Benny?’

‘Mate, six years ago I was asked to do some basic fi nancial sleuthing for Malaysian military intelligence, right?’

Mac nodded.

‘They’re on top of this JI wanker, Abu Samir, and there’s been some chatter – one of their informers is saying that something’s up.

Something big is about to happen.’

‘Six years ago?’ asked Mac. ‘You mean October ‘02?’

‘That’s the one. We did a few searches, found some medium-sized but regular transfers coming from an al-Qaeda front company in Dubai called Headlight Industry and going into a couple of JI accounts at the Dominion.’

Mac thought it through: in the early 2000s, the major Jemaah Islamiyah bombers – Samir, Top and Hambali – were living in Malaysia, lying low after Suharto’s people declared war on Islamic extremists. But they were still on the drip-feed from OBL via accounts at Dominion Bank of Singapore.

‘Anyway,’ said Benny, ‘I told the Malaysians this and we managed to trace back the JI company accounts and fi nd some of the bankers and businessmen who were the fronts for Samir, Top and Hambali.’

Benny paused. ‘But I was nosey. A lot of people trying to move money around the world – you remember I told you this in Canberra?

– will create several company names that are almost, but not exactly, the same and with sequential account ID numbers. They create shadows.’

‘So that,’ Mac picked up the thread, ‘when investigators run searches looking for a match on an account number or account name, the computer might list the shadows, but when a human eye is looking down thousands of lines of names or numbers, it subconsciously discards the ones that aren’t quite right. I remember you said that as far as computers go, the human brain is almost too good.’

‘Correct,’ said Benny. ‘So I went back over my lists and looked for shadow Headlight accounts and numbers.’

‘And?’ Mac fi nished his beer.

‘I found a Headlight Industrie – with an ie, not a y – and the same account number but one digit changed.’

‘So, this was al-Qaeda?’

‘Sure was, except they were paying a lot more money than the Samir transactions.’

‘How much?’

‘Ten million US.’

Mac whistled.

‘Yeah,’ said Benny, ‘and it was landing in a Cook Islands bank account for a mob called Desert Enterprises.’

‘Naveed?’

‘Well, from what you brought me tonight, I think we can say that Desert is a joint venture between Naveed and Hassan.’

‘The money guy and the ops guy.’

‘That’s it. The thing about that ten million back in ‘02? It landed exactly ten days before the Sari and Paddy’s were bombed.’

‘Shit,’ said Mac, his pulse starting to race.

‘Yeah – I’ll never forget it. We had – the Malaysians had – the information but didn’t know what to do with it. Too much of that Konfrontasi bullshit, if you ask me.’

Mac nodded, aware of the enmity between the Malaysian and Indonesian intelligence services. ‘So, NIME?’

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Benny fl icking his cigarette out the window. ‘That channel between Headlight Industrie and Desert was only ever used once. For the ten mill.’

‘Okay.’

‘Until last night.’

Mac stared at him, a hammer knocking in his temples.

‘How much?’ asked Mac.

‘Thirteen million US. I’d call that an infl ation dividend,’ mused Benny.

‘Which means?’

‘Which means whatever Hassan sold the rag-heads last time, he’s probably done it again.’

The soap scum Mac had put under the door handle was intact and he barged into the room, his feet giving him hell from the coins.

There was a porcelain pitcher of water on the sideboard and, pouring a glass, he walked onto the balcony. It was just after nine pm and he could hear the jazz band from the courtyard of the Raffl es Hotel across the still, humid night. Glugging down water, he pondered his options. Atkins wanted Mac out of Jakarta, so his next moves had to be made carefully. The last thing he needed was an Australian Protective Service crew manhandling him onto a Qantas fl ight. That wasn’t how he wanted to be met at Brissie by Jenny and Rachel.

Contacting Joe Imbruglia was out of the question. He’d be required to report any contact and Mac didn’t want to put him in that position. If Mac pursued that avenue now, the trust would be broken and Joe would see him as a liability.

There were four people he could call; one was recovering from bullet wounds, the other’s voicemail seemed to have been tampered with. Number three would be Martin Atkins, but there was a chance of blowback, no matter how strong his appeal to Atkins about Hassan’s latest actions.

That left the fourth – Freddi Gardjito. Freddi had been more affected by Diane’s shooting than he admitted. When Mac had been talking with Diane about Sarah in that hospital room, Mac had glanced across and seen Freddi looking out the window with a thousand-yard stare, his right hand trying to rub his chin but shaking like a leaf.

Mac took a deep breath and decided to call Martin Atkins. The phone made ten rings and Mac was about to hit the red button when Atkins picked up.

‘Hi there – I’m home!’ said Mac.

‘Shit,’ Atkins mumbled. ‘McQueen?’

‘Last time I checked.’

There was a pause and Mac assumed Atkins was mouthing something at whoever was in his offi ce, probably Garvs. ‘So, where are you?’

Mac kept it conversational, wanting Atkins to play the aggressor.

‘In KL – took the MAS fl ight. Wanted to pick up a few things before going south.’

‘Oh really?’ said Atkins, forcing a chuckle. ‘I thought we’d talked about the eight o’clock into Perth. That would be a Garuda fl ight.’

‘Sure, Marty, didn’t quite get the eight o’clock thing. I actually got out of town earlier than you asked.’

Atkins exhaled, gave up. ‘Good stuff, mate. So have a good fl ight and we’ll see you on the next gig, eh?’

‘Marty, there’s something I needed to bring you in on,’ said Mac.

‘Me? Davidson’s your controller.’

‘Yeah, but Tony’s not answering his phone. Besides, this isn’t about end-users – any of that crap.’

‘No?’

Mac heard shiftiness in there somewhere.

‘Look, you’ve heard of Hassan Ali, right?’

Atkins paused then gave a facetious yes.

‘Mate, I have reason to believe he’s active in the area again and is primed to do what he did in Kuta in ‘02.’