Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

‘Don’t give me grief, McQueen. I need you in Denpasar, now!’

‘What, Garvey’s in the cells again? Just tell them to hose him down – he’ll come right.’

‘Don’t get smart, McQueen. We’ve got a multiple IED incident in Kuta, Garvey’s gone down there as a declared but we need a covert.

Understand?’

Mac massaged his temples with his left hand. ‘Well, if Garvey’s running it…’

‘Don’t argue with me, mate. I’ve got reports of hundreds dead – most of them Aussies. Those JI fuckers bombed a couple of nightclubs.

In Kuta! Eleven o’clock at night! You believe these people?’

Mac could hear the emotion coming up in Joe’s voice. ‘So, my role is what?’

‘The fucking Feds have a forward command post already on the move, okay? Your job is to keep an eye on things, make sure the story doesn’t get too out of shape.’

Mac nodded. Joe was worried about the Australian Federal Police taking control and doing naive things like telling the media precisely what was going on. Mac would need to tailor the story, stop any Boy Scout behaviour.

‘My cover?’

‘Embassy – your usual shit. If DFAT get to run the show, then you’ll have veto on the media releases. You’re public affairs, okay?’

‘Got it.’

Joe told him there was an Australian Navy Sea King helo on its way. ‘And McQueen?’

‘Yes, Joe?’

‘They’re on your side. None of that survivalist bullshit, okay?’

Mac walked slowly back to the cottage wondering what the real story might be in Kuta. His UN gig was in jeopardy – Mac could feel it. But there was a deeper worry in Joe’s voice, like the world had just changed forever.

The Sea King landed on Seraya Beach just before four am. Mac took the loadmaster’s arm-grip and jumped on with his pack. The helo rose, turned and headed west towards Bali. Mac cadged a pair of overalls to ward off the draught, strapped himself into the awkward hammock seat and tried to think through what this was all about.

The Australian Secret Intelligence Service was a spy agency but it was part of DFAT – the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

So it was part of the same set-up as the diplomats and the trade commissioners. When ASIS offi cers were posted to an embassy, they were either a ‘declared’ intelligence operative or they had a cover. The cover would normally be something like a second trade attache or a diplomatic mid-ranker with vaguely defi ned public affairs duties.

The way embassies worked – which really annoyed Australians who worked abroad for their country – was that ASIS spent as much time spying on their own people as they did trying to gain information advantages over other nationalities. To preserve that internal security capacity, ASIS offi cers working within a cover in the embassy were not usually declared to other Australians in the embassy. The ambassador might know and the ASIS station chief would know, but there wouldn’t be many outside that circle.

Now Joe Imbruglia was sending in Mac under embassy cover, and doing so from Manila rather than Jakarta, further complicating the situation. Mac had about forty-fi ve minutes to work up his cover, get himself back into his normal role, which at most Australian embassies in South-East Asia was assistant third secretary – political, a position that conveniently had partial oversight of the public affairs and media functions. The ASIS cover role had once been assistant counsellor public affairs, but the public affairs section of the Australian diplomatic mission was being gutted and dismantled because some genius in Canberra had decided it wasn’t a specialist discipline. Mac had a view on that: if the Americans and the Chinese said public propaganda was a specialist diplomatic discipline then that’s precisely what it was.

They landed in the military section behind Denpasar Airport at quarter to fi ve. A young woman from the embassy in Jakarta met Mac and led him to a white Holden Commodore. Julie had honey-blonde hair pulled back and a gold chain-and-bar necklace. Mac had her as a landed Queensland girl who’d gone to a Protestant boarding school and then UQ.

On the front passenger seat was Mac’s overnight bag from his locker at the Jakarta embassy. Always packed, it contained two sets of chinos, two polo shirts, undies, socks, a tropical sports jacket, a pair of overalls, and two pairs of Hi-Tecs and boat shoes. A set of IDs and Nokias were in the side pocket.

They drove past the civilian terminal of Ngurah Rai Airport, better known to Westerners as Bali International Airport, where what looked like the entire tourist population of the island was trying to get into the terminal. Buses and taxis stood in long queues on the apron under the shimmering orange fl oodlights as worried-looking Anglos tried to push through the doors into the crowded terminal.

They accelerated past a long line of traffi c and a phalanx of traffi c cops as they headed towards Kuta Beach. Mac was still trying to adjust to his rude awakening ninety minutes before and he could feel a hunger stirring.

‘So what happened here?’ he asked, yawning, as Julie sped past thousands of locals and tourists walking around in a daze.

‘Two bomb blasts outside a couple of nightclubs at Kuta, down on Legian Street,’ said Julie mechanically. ‘Aussie tourist places. There’s a lot of dead – maybe in the hundreds. US Consulate had a small one go off too.’

An ambulance screamed past in the opposite direction as they got closer to the beach. Soon after, they hit a roadblock manned by POLRI and some plainclothes, and Julie stopped, handed over her ID. Mac went for the bag between his legs and immediately felt guns coming up. He raised his hands, opened the door and let the POLRI guy with the M16 see what he was doing with his hands. Mac reached down, pulled his diplomatic passport from the pocket in the black Cordura bag and handed to it the POLRI with the German shepherd.

The plainclothes came around to Mac’s side, eyeballed him, took the passport and smirked.

‘Bit early for you, eh McQueen? You’d be sleeping off the booze this time of the morning, wouldn’t you?’

‘Bloke’s not a camel, Bongo, you know how it is.’

Bongo Sitepu, a peer of Mac’s from Indonesian intelligence, snorted, fl icked the passport to the dog-handler without looking at it and walked off.

Julie spoke with the uniform POLRI. She spoke good Bahasa and Mac picked up that she was saying they were Australian Embassy staff, going straight to the Hard Rock Hotel. They were waved through as Mac watched the police carbines being lifted and aimed at an old pale blue HiAce van pulling up behind them.

They hit another roadblock forty metres from the Hard Rock.

Concrete sleds were arranged in an overlap, with a dozen riot squad POLRI inside and outside the perimeter to the hotel. Julie showed the ID and a POLRI bloke with a bum-fl uff mo fl ashed a torch in Mac’s face and then waved them through to the hotel.

As Mac got out and stretched he was hit by the noise: trucks, fi re appliances, generators powering fl oodies, shouts from panicked men.

He could see the lights originating from three blocks away. Buses fi lled with locals in white overalls fi led past; morgue trucks and cranes, police rescue, fi re rescue, ambulances – hundreds of people, running around with injured locals, yelling at one another. As he pulled his overnight bag from the Commodore, Julie came round the front and handed Mac a white envelope.

‘Room key – and you’re sharing, till all the paying guests are gone.’

Mac wanted to argue about the sharing thing but Julie was already back in the car, putting it in gear. She made to go then stopped, leaned out the window. ‘By the way, Joe wants you to call him as soon as you check in. Indons have shut down the cellular system so you’ll have to fi nd a payphone.’