Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac shrugged. ‘I don’t have many more answers than you, mate.

I was told to be in Jakarta this evening to hunt down a missing girl.

Now we have Peter Garrison pissing into the tent.’

‘You what?’

‘I assume he’s going to be a nuisance.’

Sawtell was up, moving to a water jug on the coffee table. Mac nodded, Sawtell poured two glasses, handed one to Mac.

‘So excuse my ignorance,’ said the American as he settled into the chair, ‘but who the fuck’s Garrison?’

Mac had a choice: clam up and play it tight, or let the American in on the joke. The smart way was to say nothing. Military guys with snippets of information could go off and actually start thinking for themselves. Not always a good idea. But Mac spilled. After all, that’s why he’d called Sawtell here, away from the full-time listening posts at the embassy. ‘Peter Garrison is a rogue CIA man. Very smart, very dangerous.’

Sawtell paused, looked at Mac, neck muscles fl exing. ‘And you know this, but the Agency doesn’t?’

‘Sure they know,’ shrugged Mac. ‘But he’s been useful, I guess.’

Sawtell looked away. Mac could see he was disgusted with the whole spook thing.

‘Look,’ said Mac, ‘he was stationed for a long time in northern Pakistan and then northern Burma. He’s pulled a lot of real freaky stuff. He’s been on our radar for years. Now he’s in Jakkers and he’s with one of ours.’

‘Freaky? Like what?’

‘Remember the bombing of that Pakistani police compound in ‘03?

CNN ran with it as “The Taliban still strong in northern Pakistan”?’

‘Sure.’

‘It wasn’t a truck bomb, champ – it was US Navy Hornets. An air strike.’

Sawtell cocked an eye at the Australian, like he was challenging that version of events.

‘You’ve called in strikes?’ asked Mac.

Sawtell nodded.

‘There were more codes, grids and passwords than The Da Vinci Code , right?’

Sawtell nodded. Looked away slightly.

‘We knew who called it in about two hours after the air-to-grounds painted the joint – about an hour after the Agency told their stooges at CNN that it was a Taliban truck bomb.’

Sawtell’s nostrils fl ared. ‘Why?’

‘The Pakistanis were fi nally pulling their fi ngers out and shutting down the heroin-for-arms trade.’

‘Was Garrison part of it?’

‘Sure, and more than just Garrison – remember, the Agency kept him on the leash. They sent him to Burma after the fi reworks.’

Mac watched the soldier’s jaw muscles bulge. Your average special forces guy lived in fear of a friendly-fi re incident since it was one of those things you could never train for, couldn’t control. The idea of some slippery pen-pusher calling in friendly fi re on purpose was the kind of thing that made soldiers talk about calling in their own personal head-shot.

Mac didn’t want Sawtell distracted. He just wanted him to know the calibre of the person they were hunting.

‘So where does the girl fi t in?’ asked the soldier, fi nally breathing out.

‘Don’t know,’ lied Mac. He looked at his civvie watch. ‘Gotta go, mate – we’re on a plane at fi ve.’

Sawtell stood and turned for the door he’d come through, then stopped and fi xed Mac with an X-ray look. ‘That was some shit in Sibuco, huh?’

Mac’s heart sank. He wasn’t close enough to touch wood. He hated talking about missions where someone carked it. ‘Yeah, those are some boys you got there.’

‘They call you the Pizza Man, by the way,’ Sawtell winked. ‘Just thought I’d warn you.’

The street was even quieter now than an hour ago. It was almost midnight and Mac sauntered the three blocks to the Aussie residential compound. He concentrated on relaxing from his feet to his head, breathing hibiscus fumes deep and slow and trying to concentrate on pleasant things.

But he couldn’t clear his mind. Sawtell had asked, ‘Where does the girl fi t in?’

The fi le on Garrison said he’d been seen with Chinese agents. In Jakarta. He was believed to be fronting at least two identities in Chinese intelligence’s preferred banking domicile of the Cook Islands.

Now Garrison had inveigled himself into the Australian China Desk, the Hannah bird was missing and their last known sighting was a place Mac had vowed to never visit again.

The morning fl ight was landing them in Sulawesi – land of a thousand nightmares.

Frank McQueen left nothing but shadow in his wake: rugby league star, North Queensland’s top detective and veteran of the Vietnam War.

When cattle-stealing season came around, all the young detectives put up their hands for Frank’s expeditions into the interior. Mac grew up poring over the newspapers with his sister Virginia, looking for the inevitable photograph of their dad dragging a couple of ringbarked bumpkins into the lock-up.

When Mac won a sports scholarship to Nudgee College in Brisbane, Frank gulped down some big ones. That was until he realised that the pride of Queensland Catholic education preferred rugby over rugby league. Frank regularly captained Country Police in their annual rugby league stoush with the Brisbane Cops and Frank didn’t like the idea of his son going to Nudgee to play a sport he declared was only for

‘wankers or ponies’.

Mac spent his privileged education smarting under the sneers of his father. Even making Queensland Schoolboys in his senior year couldn’t turn it. Everything hinged on Mac going into the Queensland cops and getting an armchair ride through the Ds as Frank’s Son.

The day he phoned his mother and told her he’d taken a job with a textbook company, his mum actually groaned. He didn’t tell her he was going to be a spook. Wasn’t allowed. Didn’t know that the fi b he told her would be a lifelong habit.

Frank got on the line, asked Mac a couple of questions and fi gured it pretty quick. ‘Don’t tell me, this place is in Canberra and Jakarta, right?’ Frank upgraded his insult about rugby players. ‘Intel people,’ said Frank, who was infantry in Vietnam, ‘are wankers and ponies.’

Which was what Mac was thinking about as he strode in a crowd across the sticky hot tarmac of Makassar’s Hasanuddin Airport, carrying a black suit bag over his shoulder, a black wheelie bag trailing behind.

In order to get the salesman cover going he wore a short-sleeved beige safari suit, Italian brown woven shoes and a pair of Porsche sunnies. His thin blond hair was gelled straight back and he had a thick gold chain at his neck. The tan was real but it could easily pass for one of those indoor jobs. It was the salesman look he affected for travelling as Richard Davis from Southern Scholastic Books.

If Frank saw his son like this, Mac’s cover would be secure. Frank would ignore him. Stone cold motherless.

Just after ten in the morning and the pilot had warned them that it was already thirty-eight degrees at the airport. To the south, massive cloud formations rose thousands of storeys into the air – black, blue and purple and staring down over the tropical sauna of southern Sulawesi.

There was no wind: the very air strained under the weight of what Mac reckoned was ninety-eight per cent humidity.

Mac glanced back at the Lion Air 737 cooling its wings behind him. Garuda was a nest of spies and informers during Suharto’s era, and no one in the intelligence community had trusted it since. Still, the Lion fl ight was comfortable, unlike what Sawtell and his boys would be going through: Jakarta to Balikpapan by helo and then a C-130 fl ight into Watampone across the peninsula from Makassar. It would look like a military milk run. No fl ags, no Chinese nosey-pokes.

The cabbie who drove him to the Pantai Gapura was understanding about Mac’s requests for a few detours here and there. There was no tail, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be. He got the room he wanted at the Pantai, 521, overlooking the pool bar. There were no balconies looking down on his room and there was only one other door on the fl oor. He checked with reception: no bookings in 522.