Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

Ari, who had obviously looked at it harder than Mac, suggested that they read this latent as possibly a combination of two, and that the Arabic symbols and the lines might have been beneath the fl ight times.

They looked at it and started with the symbols. The fi rst one, bounded by two straight vertical lines, started with what could be a ‘V’ and faded into several lines and curves. To its left was a longer series – done by the same hand – and positioned beside a circle. Mac and Ari could discern a crucifi x or a ‘T’ in the jumble but it didn’t appear to relate to the scrawls around it. To the right, and lower than the other words – and also bound within its own lines – was a short collection of curves. The lines suggested a map or blueprint, with accompanying codes. But even with Mossad’s extraordinary attempts to bring the latent writing to life, it was indistinct to Ari and Mac.

‘I am worried about this circle here, McQueen,’ said Ari, grimacing and sipping his beer, and looking around the bar before going back to the latent. ‘Lines here, symbols here,’ he gestured, ‘but this circle in middle – like tower or building?’

‘I guess if we’re saying this is a map,’ said Mac, ‘then the question is, what of? A circuit board? A bugging set-up in a house? An

network? Are these electrical symbols?’

Ari sat back in the cane chair. ‘We have Hassan in Australia, with device. He could be anywhere and this is the only clues we have. I was thinking it must have local relevance – that it would mean something to you.’

Shaking his head, Mac turned the paper on its side and upside down. But there was still nothing.

‘I was desperate, so I tried this too,’ said Ari, slightly embarrassed.

Pulling another piece of A4 fax paper from the chest pocket of his red trop shirt, he unfolded it. ‘I had some people take out the fl ight times and do enhancement, yes?’

He laid down the page and now it looked like a map. The lines

– when enhanced by the techs at Mossad – ran into one another so the map could perhaps be of a street, an airport runway, a container port. But the words were still a problem, not helped by the fact that whoever had written them on a pad in the Galaxy hadn’t been intending for his work to be held as an archive. It was a quick sketch and the writing was shorthand.

‘The Federal Police have sightings of these guys heading south down the Queensland coast – Maryborough was the latest. So I’ve been thinking about Brisbane airport,’ said Mac, drinking his XXXX.

‘Australian airports are crowded this time of year. Or it could be one of the big shopping malls: the last few days of shopping before Christmas. Then it’s Christmas on the Thursday this year.’

‘And Federal Police has this, yes?’ asked Ari.

‘Yep. So do ASIS and ASIO and the state cops. But they have a live search going on for a nuclear device. You can imagine that your average cop is not exactly relaxed about that, right?’

Someone cleared their throat behind Mac, and Ari looked up, blushed as he smiled. Mari greeted Mac with a hug and shook hands with Ari as he stood, a smile fi xed on his face like Howdy Doody. She looked stunning, her long hair pulled up in a loose bun, showing off her graceful neck.

‘Mari. That is such beautiful name,’ said Ari. If he’d had a cap it would have been mangled in his hands.

‘Thanks, Ari – it’s short for Marama.’

‘ Mar -rar-mar,’ he drawled slowly, putting the Russian ‘r’ sounds into it. ‘I like that.’

They drank and joked, Mari saying that she might stay in Queensland this trip – could be time to join the real world and make some money with her fancy vet’s degree. They joked about her father, Huck, coming to town for Chrissie and how the big man went to pieces whenever he saw his grandson, James.

‘Dad’s a big sook,’ laughed Mari. ‘At least, with his family he is.’

Mac left them to it and walked south along the beach, watching the Pacifi c turn purple and the lights going on in the apartments along the beach. People were lighting citronella fl ares and fi ring up barbecues on their patios.

When he came into the house, the lights were down and some candles were burning on the outside table, Ricki Lee Jones was on the stereo – the fi rst album. Jenny came through and they met in the living room. She sipped from her wine, put the glass down, grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands around to her bum as she snuggled in with a smile. He noticed she’d put on lipstick.

‘What was that about brunettes?’ she teased.

‘Oh that?’ smiled Mac. ‘I’ll need to authenticate fi rst.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I might have to do some close-range surveillance, check that you are who you say you are.’

‘Some undercover work, huh?’ she giggled.

‘Might even do a taste test,’ he murmured, kissing her neck. ‘Have to do these things properly.’

‘Invade my privacy,’ she purred, now grinding her hips into him. She put her hands up to his face and they kissed and Mac felt everything else pushed out of his mind. He felt the warmth of his wife’s arousal on his cheek as she kissed him and pushed him back to the kitchen bar. She squeezed her body onto him in undulating waves and as he lifted his right hand to her breast and felt her heart beating through her tank top, Jenny dropped her mouth to the nape of his neck and dropped her hand to his pants. He leaned back on the kitchen bar, letting her kiss him in a place that he had always guarded.

Jenny was the only person allowed to touch his neck.

She kissed him up the side of his face and came eye to eye with him. ‘Take me to bed,’ she said in a hoarse whisper. As she kissed him again he caught a glimpse of them in the mirror on the other side of the room, noticing that the tag on her tank was out. For a split second he wondered what Esprit would be backwards and then just as quickly he adjusted that thought to the fact that when people spelled words backwards they never accounted for the letters turning backwards too and creating whole new meanings, other languages…

Jenny disengaged and looked at his face as he tensed, then sighed as she realised she’d lost him.

He slapped at the pockets of his jeans until he found what he was looking for in his back pocket. Unfurling the enhanced latent from Mossad, with the fl ight times taken out, he looked at it again. Then he turned it around and pointed it at the mirror, adrenaline pumping through his temples. The reason the latent from that pad in the Galaxy was so confused was because the writer had initially written fl ight times, probably from a phone call. Then, at a subsequent time, when the pad was grabbed and opened randomly and the piece of paper also grabbed randomly – the diagram was now being pressed down on the back of the piece of paper that had received the fl ight times latent. So it was reversed.

The latent Mac held was now clearly identifi able as an ad hoc street map: a main road ran up and down the page with a branch road running off to the left. Written on that branch road was Orch, and on the main trunk was Cav. Ari had been half right about the circle being a tower. It was a tower that went into the ground, a stormwater drain indicated by the word storm, and Mac could envisage exactly where it was. Someone in Hassan’s crew – perhaps Hassan himself – had drawn a street map of the intersection of Cavill Avenue and Orchid Avenue, the main streets of Surfers Paradise, and the most crowded outdoor area in Queensland – perhaps Australia – in the nights leading up to Christmas. Mac thought about his conversation with Ari. He’d been worried about Christmas shopping crowds, but the crowds were just as big for drinking and carousing. And it was Saturday night – the last Saturday before Christmas.