Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

‘I am not knowing, McQueen – I need to sit down, have chat about this.’

Mac rubbed his face. He’d wanted to spend some time with Jenny and Rachel and he had the Sarah situation to cover, and then Frank and Pat were in town too.

‘Okay, mate.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Let’s say six o’clock in the Iluka?’

‘Okay, McQueen. Be careful, yes?’

‘More than most, mate.’

He called John Morris, who sounded upbeat. The AFP had a sighting at the Isis River BP station just out of Maryborough. Two South Asian men in a white Nissan Patrol: both well dressed, one in his forties, the other early thirties. The pump attendant was suspicious because they looked too classy to be running around at two am and then they paid in cash and didn’t want the receipt. The bloke got the fi rst part of the rego – GU. And there was now a wide alert with the local cops.

‘We looking at Queensland as the target, John?’ asked Mac, feeling the sense of confusion fi nally getting down to a sharper point.

‘Too early to say, mate.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Mac, annoyed at the whole cautious cop routine. ‘But now we’d have to be concluding Brissie, Gold Coast, right?’

‘It’s the only conclusion, mate. We don’t have a choice.’

Mac was being shut out of it. The cops had narrowed the threat into something they could manage – and hopefully defeat – and Mac was happy he’d at least helped get them to this stage.

‘And McQueen?’

‘Yeah, mate?’

‘Nice work with the luggage tags and satellites. You did good.’

After ringing off, Mac slugged back his beer, stood and walked past the tail, keeping his pace normal. He went down the escalators to the ground level, found the gents and eased into a toilet cubicle. Putting his backpack on the cistern, he lowered the seat, sat and waited. As people came and went, he acclimatised to the sounds and waited for the right gait. Men didn’t creep into a toilet, they stormed it. So Mac waited for the slow squeak of the door and a lack of footfalls as his tail cased the place. He waited eleven minutes, until there was one other bloke, with a histrionic style, and no one else.

He was right on the verge of suggesting the other cubicle occupant went easier on the processed meats when the door made a light squeal and the concourse noise fl ooded in for slightly too long.

Someone had paused at the door. Mac held his feet up and waited for the footfalls to come close and then he fl ung open the cubicle door.

The tail was right in front of the cubicle, his face betraying him. Mac lunged but the tail was ready and attempted a stamp kick. Rushing him, Mac knocked the tail off-balance and pushed him up off his feet into the wall, holding him in a half nelson.

The tail struggled and clawed at Mac’s face but after a few seconds Mac’s pressure on the carotids worked their magic and the tail faded into unconsciousness.

Mac dragged the bloke into his cubicle, sat him on the lowered seat, leaned him back, shut the door and ratted him. He had about two minutes before the bloke woke up fully and he tried the suit pockets and came up with boarding passes in the name of Short, John James; one Sydney to Coolangatta and the other one a Singapore Airlines fl ight from Singers to Brisbane. Same fl ight as Mac had taken.

Checking the other jacket pocket, Mac came up with a Nokia phone while the tail snored. Pulling out his own phone, Mac put the tail’s SIM card into his own Nokia and transferred the contacts to

‘phone’. Then went to ‘calls made’ and saved the top one and went to calls received and saved the top one. He put the SIM back in John Short’s phone and put the phone and wallet back where they came from. As the bloke snorted for breath Mac undid the tail’s belt and pulled his pants and undies off, checking the undies label as he did so: T.M. Lewin boxer shorts, in the same colour as his cotton Oxford.

Putting the pants and undies in his pack, Mac walked out.

There was a middle-aged security guard in front of Mac as he came out. The bloke looked to be a proper sort of Aussie bloke, so Mac, acting concerned, leaned in.

‘Mate, this is embarrassing – but there’s a drunk in there asking men for sex.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, champ. It’s not like I’m homophobic or anything, but I am a Catholic. Understand?’

The guard understood perfectly and Mac walked towards his boarding gate.

The last call John Short had made had been to a local mobile number, but the last call he’d received had the Jakarta prefi x, 6221, in front of a landline number Mac vaguely recognised. He couldn’t place it so as his cab made north for Broadbeach from Coolangatta Mac thought what the fuck and pressed the green button. It connected into TI and made those strange ringing sounds with a big gap between them. An English female voice answered and said, Coastal Trading Company, may I help you?

Mac hung up, breathed out as he sank into the back seat of the cab and saved John Short’s ‘contacts’ list from ‘phone’ to ‘SIM’.

Danny, he thought, tapping his teeth with the Nokia. Danny fucking Fitzgibbon.

The AFP guards greeted Mac as he ran up the steps. Letting himself into the townhouse, he saw Jen was on the phone and Rachel was sitting on the fl oor banging a green plastic cube with a plastic ball.

Pulling a VB from the fridge, he raised an inquiring eyebrow at Jenny and she nodded. He opened another bottle for her and sat down on the fl oor with Rachel. Jenny moved out onto the patio and sat at the table, making lots of hmm noises, which usually meant she thought someone was bullshitting her. She nodded, sipped on the beer and signed off. Mac gave Rachel a kiss on the forehead and walked out to the patio and kissed his wife.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked, easing back in the plastic outdoor chair, the thromp of helos evident in the distance.

‘Those people in the sweatshop are from all over South-East, even Burma,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Going to take ages to repatriate them.’

‘Not your problem yet, is it?’ he asked.

Jenny gave him The Look and Mac said, ‘Fair enough. So what about Santo?’

‘They’ve charged him.’

Mac frowned and sighed. ‘Shit.’

‘No one holds a gun to a cop’s head and then walks,’ said Jen. ‘PA are strong about that up here – not how it works.’

Mac was going to say something smart about the Police Association

– the cops’ trade union – but decided against it. They weren’t always there for Frank in the old days.

‘But anyway,’ she said, ‘Ke is back with his sisters and they’re all applying for residency, so fi ngers crossed.’

Mac wondered if he shouldn’t have tried harder with Ke, got him out of the immigration tangle. He decided to leave it.

‘I’m having a beer with Ari at six, but I won’t be late.’

‘Ari, huh?’ she smiled.

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Well say it!’

‘You know.’

‘Do I?’ asked Mac, a little lost in the whole female obtuse thing.

‘Yeah, you know – Ari and Mari, up a tree?’

Laughing, Mac asked her if she was kidding.

‘No. They like each other, didn’t you see?’

Mac hadn’t seen.

‘So, maybe -‘

Mac got it. ‘Okay, we’ll be at the Iluka bar. If she meets us there at six-thirty, I’ll do the handover, okay?’

Jenny smiled widely and picked up the cordless phone, started dialling.

‘Then I could be in the mood for a sexy brunette with a great arse,’ said Mac with a wink.

Ari and Mac compared their faxes of the latents that BAIS had taken from the Galaxy.

‘I think these are the Araby words, yes?’ asked Ari, pointing to three symbols that were faint but clearly meant something. Each one was at a slightly different angle and seemed to sit around a bunch of lines, some that were parallel, others at an angle with what looked like a dotted or broken line through the whole set-up. Superimposed was a list of numbers and numerals that were easily recognisable as fl ight times from Singers to Darwin.