Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

The big foreign newspapers still sent in their brightest journalists, the governments rotated in their expert diplomats and the spies trained for a year to get a posting in Jakkers.

And none of them knew what the fuck was going on.

Sonny veered towards a demountable building on the road side.

It was cool inside. A very large Fijian soldier in a black T-shirt and olive fatigue shorts sat at a desk. He leapt up on seeing Sonny, webbing gun rig swinging around as he did.

‘How they going, Mosie?’ said Sonny.

Mac looked to his right, saw Sawtell, Hard-on and Spikey. They were sitting at a table eating lunch behind a steel-mesh cage. They looked over: swollen eyes, split lips. Hate in their eyes. Mac was going to have to work on this.

‘Good – no problems,’ the Fijian replied.

The guy called Mosie looked quickly at Mac.

‘Moses, this is Mr McQueen. These are his boys.’

Mac took his hand. ‘Looking after them, Moses?’

‘Yes, Mr McQueen.’

Mac winked at him. ‘Set, brother.’

Moses beamed. There were two types of fi eldwork: thuggery and enlistment. You either treated your world as eternally hostile – like the Israelis and Russians – or you cosied up to people and enlisted them.

Mac preferred the enlistment model.

Mac moved to the cage. ”Zit going, boys?’

‘The fuck you think?!’ said Sawtell.

‘You’ll be out soon, Moses has it covered,’ said Mac, trying to keep it light.

He saw a rack of guns and Cordura bags hanging from the whitewashed wall as he left.

Time to get it sorted.

Cookie Banderjong was nothing like Mac expected. He had a full head of hair, pushed up and back in a pompadour. A good-looking, round-faced Javanese. The legs outstretched on a huge teak desk revealed a pair of Billabong boardies. His legs were muscled, his chest pushed out against the white polo shirt – the one with the alligator on it. His intel days were over but he was still working out.

As Sonny and Mac entered he was talking on the phone, wearing a headset plugged straight into his computer. He twirled the headset cable in the air as he yelled at someone in Indonesian. Then it changed to English. ‘Dave, that prick’s got something wrong with his brain. Deadset, you make me come down there and it’ll get ugly.

Tell him that… okay… yeah… sweet. Sweet as.’

What stumped Mac was the accent: pure Strine. So it was true, Cookie Banderjong did grow up in Melbourne. You could read all the fi les but you never really got a feel for a person until you heard them.

Cookie was still into somebody. ‘Yeah, I know, mate. Like I said, either the company starts getting eight-hour shifts – of actual work! out of these blokes or I’ll come down with Mr Makatoa and we’ll have a word in the shell-like.’ He smiled at Mac and Sonny, held his hand up in apology.

Mac felt expensive Sumatran silk carpet through his socks. They’d been asked to remove their shoes at the tradies’ entrance.

Cookie signed off: ‘Yeah, yeah, mate. I know. It’s not your fault.

Time to sort it though, huh? Sweet, no worries, catchya.’

He squeezed a button on the cable, tore his headset off and chucked it on the desk. Walked around the desk and across the chocolate-coloured carpet in his bare feet. Cookie was about fi ve-nine and athletic. He put out his hand, smiled big like a movie star.

‘You must be Alan?’

”Zit going?’ said Mac.

‘Can’t complain.’

They shook. Mac smiled back. Couldn’t help himself.

‘They call me Mac.’

‘Mr Makatoa’s told me a bit about you – sounds interesting.’ Cookie pointed to the white leather sofas by the huge PanaVista window that looked out over the valley.

So Cookie was an enlister too. He used the correct pronunciation of Sonny’s name. He said it Maka- tor, knowing how irritated Sonny would get hearing the Anglo version of Maka- to -er. In Maori, toa meant warrior, and people with that in their names felt it was there for good reason. Enlisters noticed the small things; Mac decided he’d better be cagey with this guy.

Cookie’s offi ce was a sprawling thing up on the second storey of the mansion. Around the walls were the mementos of his life in BAKIN, the Suharto-era Indonesian intelligence apparatus which had also had a secret police function. There was a picture of Cookie smiling with an elderly Richard Nixon, both of them in golf clothes.

A black and white photo of a group of men looking serious, standing around a strategy table. It featured a younger short-back-and-sides Cookie with a man who might have been Alexander Haig.

Cookie called for tea and came over to the sofa, saw Mac checking the walls.

‘So you’re ASIS?’

Mac didn’t respond. In any other company he’d have done the old then I’d have to kill you. But he wasn’t going to say that to Cookie Banderjong. Not here. Not in front of Sonny.

‘You’ll like this one,’ said Cookie, moving to a picture on the wall.

He took it down and gave it to Mac. It showed two men of similar age talking to one another in what looked like a banquet hall. A Chinese banquet hall. Communist Party dog collars and Liberation Army fruit salad displays fi lled the background. The two men in the foreground were in suits and ties: Cookie animated, the other man sullen but intent. The unmistakable face of Vladimir Putin.

Mac smiled. ‘Where and when?’

‘Beijing, ‘93,’ said Cookie. ‘I went through our surveillance footage with the technical guys after the dinner – as you do – and there was this one. He was such a strange guy: very smart, very intense. He was nothing then, just one of those over-serious Commies with the Russian legation.’

‘You guys got a camera into a Chinese state function?’ Mac chortled. ‘Are you fucking nuts?’

‘Only when I drink.’

They shared a laugh. It was funny. But Cookie was also pulling rank, showing Mac that he was hardcore. The real thing – a bloke who could waltz into Beijing and pull counter-surveillance on the MSS, on their own patch.

Cookie warmed to the story. ‘I saw Putin on the news a few years ago when he became president, and I’m like Holy shit – I know that prick.

Went back to the old surveillance prints, pulled some strings and got that little beauty on my wall.’

Mac was being played. He handed back the picture and Cookie gave him the wink.

The tea came through with the housemaid and kids’ screams echoed through the open door.

‘Thanks, Rosie – and tell those kids if I have to come down there I’ll take the damn PlayStation and chuck it in the bin. Okay?’

Cookie eased back into the sofa. The enlistment was over, his face slackened a bit. ‘What have we got down there, Mac? And what’s in it for me?’

Mac told Cookie as much as he could about Judith Hannah and Peter Garrison. Mentioned the ambush in Makassar, but not that he thought it was Canberra-connected.

Cookie squinted at Mac. ‘This Garrison, is that the northern Pakistan Garrison? The police compound guy?’

Mac nodded. ‘Drugs for guns for gold. A clever guy, good at playing everyone off.’

‘That wasn’t a terrorist attack, was it?’ Cookie smiled but with no conviction.

‘Nah. Garrison called in an air strike far as we could see.’

Cookie looked out on the valley. ‘And Garrison’s still Agency?’

‘I was briefed three nights ago, and they were claiming him then,’ said Mac.

Cookie looked at Sonny. ‘Well this might be a nice coincidence, hey Sonny?’

Sonny had most of his mercs running cover and clearances for a Malaysian logging company in the Tokala peninsula. At the same time, Cookie seemed to want Garrison shaken down to see where the money trail led. Sonny needed a slightly larger crew for that gig and Cookie wanted Sonny to use the Americans to make up the numbers.