Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

‘Well, exporters.’

She sat forward, wanting more.

‘Okay,’ said Mac, ‘someone wants to export to Singapore and get the taxpayer to underwrite payment? The government might be prepared to guarantee payment, but they want to know who the parties are and what the deal actually is.’

‘Sounds interesting.’

Later, when Suzi went to the ladies, Benny leaned over to Mac.

‘By the way, champ, got so tied up in those documents of yours that I forgot to pass something on.’

‘Yeah?’ said Mac, taking a swig of his beer.

‘This is a free gift to Jen, right? Just so she knows there’re no hard feelings, and then we’re square, okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Mac, smiling.

At their wedding reception at the Jakarta Golf Club Jenny had cornered Benny and told him off for constructing and maintaining the kind of secret banking and business linkages – grey networks – that allowed the sex-slavers and human traffi ckers to get away with it. Jenny had had a skinful that night and her FBI friend, Milinda, had had to drag her away from what could have turned ugly.

‘Last week I was doing some work for a client and I got to see something I shouldn’t have seen,’ whispered Benny, scanning the courtyard for eyes.

‘Okay,’ said Mac, letting his body get lower to hear.

‘Well it seems our old friends from the Khmer Rouge are back in business, and there’s a lot of funds coming back into Singers right now.’

‘Where from?’ asked Mac.

‘South-east Queensland, judging by some of the numbers.’

‘Who?’

Benny eyed him and smiled. ‘Come on, mate, I’ve said too much.

Let’s just say that after years doing their thing in Indo and Thailand, the KRs have moved to where the real money is.’

After Suzi came back, the talk got more general. Benny was a great host as always and Suzi was a smart young lawyer fresh out of the University of Sydney Law School, doing her clerking with the legal side of Benny’s practice. Mac liked the tough but open character of middle-class Singaporeans. It was a similar trait to the Israelis. Both countries raised their kids with the knowledge that everything they took for granted could be snatched away tomorrow, so they should enjoy it – and fi ght for it. Both countries sat in the midst of an Islamic tide, both had been created by the West as Anglo-leaning capitalist democracies, and both had built the kind of national wealth that engendered nothing but resentment from those around them.

Suzi was appalled by the jihadists and their methods, in contrast to some of the students Mac had tutored at Sydney Uni, who thought the bombers had a point. There was a softness in younger Australians and an appetite for received wisdom that Mac found disturbing.

He told Suzi how in one tutorial discussion, a woman in her early thirties had upbraided Mac for talking about Indonesian aggression during Konfrontasi in the mid-1960s. She claimed Konfrontasi had been an attempt by Sukarno to stop an ‘imperialist land-grab in Borneo’ and that everyone knew this. Of course, in 1963 alone the Indonesian military had carried out more than thirty bombings in Singapore, many of them on civilian targets such as cafes and buses, and Mac had asked his student how this stopped Sarawak and Sabah becoming part of the Malay Federation? The woman had stormed out, calling him a

‘Bush-lover’.

‘I know – it’s true!’ Suzi said, wide-eyed. ‘Other students were saying to me Oooh, but the poor Muslims have a point, and I’m like, Naaahhh -‘ she said it with a theatrically downturned mouth and big smiling eyes, ‘ let them hang! ‘

Benny and Mac laughed, couldn’t help themselves. The Singaporean Chinese had no sense of why you’d make excuses for people who bombed cafes.

‘I’m like, to my Aussie friends,’ continued Suzi, ‘ When you live in Singapore, you know that you are Mantiqi One – lucky to be fi rst on their list.’

Mac met her eye as he tried to recall. ‘Mantiqi One – that’s…’

Suzi sipped her wine. ‘JI’s fi rst bombing zone. Singapore and Malaysia.’

‘Nice of them,’ growled Benny.

‘Yeah,’ said Suzi. ‘And if you’re in Western Indonesia, you’re Mantiqi Two. Mantiqi Three covers Sabah, Mindanao and Sulawesi, I think.’

‘Gee, what have they got for this – a spreadsheet?’ asked Mac.

Suzi giggled. ‘Don’t think you get off lightly. Guess where the bombs go off in Mantiqi Four?’

Mac shrugged. ‘What’s left? Flores?’

‘No, silly – Mantiqi Four is Australia.’

‘Really?’ said Mac, the humour draining from his face.

‘Yeah – Mantiqi Four. You know, the Fourth Brigade.’

Mac was woken shortly before six am by the sound of a female voice hissing. Going out to his balcony, he looked down to the rear garden where Miss Rasmi was muttering insults and waving a broom at a koel bird in the tree. After a brief shower he reapplied his mo and walked around the corner to the Raffl es for some brekkie. Businesspeople sat around the restaurant, reading the Straits and texting on their BlackBerries.

Seeing a table by the rear wall, Mac dropped his phone and wallet on it and walked to the maitre d’ station, ordered the full cooked breakfast and a pot of coffee, managing to not blanch at the bill.

The coffee came quickly, in a large silver pot, and he surveyed the room for a tail while he poured. He clocked an early thirties Anglo or Euro male with short light brown hair and an athletic frame in expensive but anonymous clothes. The guy looked around the room for a fraction too long as he waited for the maitre d’, and then sat two tables away.

Mac gave him a wink. ‘How’s it going?’

Smiling, the bloke played it cool and turned back to his Straits Times. Mac decided he might have to fl ush the bird into the open rather than going stumbling into the bush. Firing up the Nokia, he redialled Freddi’s number. It rang twice before Freddi answered. ‘ Alo .’

‘Fred, it’s McQueen,’ said Mac, pushing his right hand onto his ear to block out the sound of the restaurant.

‘How are you?’ asked Freddi.

‘Bad time?’

‘If I say yes, you hang up?’

Mac laughed. He could hear a child talking in the background.

‘Mate, I’ll call back in thirty minutes.’

‘Okay.’

‘Thanks, mate – bye,’ he said and hit the red button, took a slug of surprisingly good coffee and made for the bain-maries.

As he sat with the bacon and eggs Mac made a show of looking at his watch, then sighed and stood up, grabbed his phone and wallet and walked out of the restaurant.

‘Back in a tick,’ he said, smiling at the head waitress as he headed out. Walking through the lobby at a brisk pace, he looked for eyes, although he didn’t expect to fi nd them in the lobby. There’d be someone outside and they’d have a prop: reading a newspaper, standing at a parking meter, sitting on a park bench with a phone to their ear.

Mac saw her as he was halfway down the Raffl es front steps. The other tail was a late-twenties Anglo or Euro brunette in a burgundy skirt suit, standing next to a car pretending to be on the phone. Mac continued down the steps and paused at the forecourt, looked directly at the girl and feigned surprise at being made. Running around the side of the building, through the gardens, he strode into the courtyard where he’d been with Suzi and Benny the night before and then let himself into the side alcove of the Raffl es lobby. Moving forward quietly, behind a porter’s trolley, Mac scanned the vast area, thankful for the air-con. To his left he could see the retreating form of the male tail, the large wood and glass doors swishing behind him.