Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

‘Mate, let’s make this the last one, huh?’ said Garvs abruptly.

He must have clocked Mac’s surprise. It wasn’t even ten o’clock and Anton Garvey was piking. Garvs was not the kind of man to run screaming from a cold beer.

‘Not like you, Garvs. Doctor’s orders?’

Garvs called the bierfrau over. ‘Nah, mate, but I’ve got you on the morning fl ight into Sydney. You know how early you have to leave.’

The Qantas morning fl ight out of Jakarta departed at 4.10 am and went through Singers before heading south. The drive to Soekarno-Hatta took an hour, and on a bad morning, clearing security could take an hour. Mac had drawn the crow.

‘Not trying to get rid of me, are you, mate?’

Garvs’ face told Mac that’s exactly what was happening. ‘Nah, Macca. If that was the case you’d have been on the night fl ight.’

The beers arrived. ‘I have to talk to Hannah. You know that, don’t you?’ said Mac.

‘Don’t worry – we’ve got it from here,’ said Garvey.

Mac remembered when ‘we’ used to have him in it.

Garvey had changed. Or had Mac? He remembered one of the fi rst times they’d got on the turps together, in KL. It was one of those embassy functions where they pull out the big TV screen, fi re up the barbie and turn on the booze for the Bledisloe Cup – Kiwis and Aussies on the razz. And locals looking on amazed that two nationalities could stand there giving each other a total shellacking and be laughing about it. Garvs and Mac had bonded on the schools thing since they’d both gone to a St Joseph’s school: Garvs in Sydney, Mac in Brisbane. Mac had decided to have some fun with the bloke, said, ‘Shit, if you’re a real Mick then what happened to the Mac at the front of your name? Not one of them closet Prods, are ya, mate?’

Garvs had come back fast as you like, said, ‘Mate, if we dropped the Mac off your name we might be getting closer to the truth, huh?’

That was pretty much how their friendship had continued. Always taking the piss. No one ever getting the last word.

Now, Mac’s skin was crawling. He pushed again. ‘So who’s we, mate? This a Tobin thing? Urquhart?’

Garvey snorted through his nostrils. Shook his head as if to say, This is all too tedious. ‘Oh, by the way, Macca. We found your Nokia. Bus driver. We got it pouched in from Makassar.’

Garvey pulled the blue phone out of his breast pocket, like he’d just remembered it was there. Threw it on the table.

Mac smiled. ‘Damned things – got a mind of their own, huh, Garvs?’

Garvey stared at him too long. ‘Mate, the listening post is for your own safety, you know that. You take things so personally.’

Mac could have made an allegation about the Minky ambush, could have pushed the conversation into there being a mole, or at the very least someone on the Garrison payroll. Could have got on his high horse and asked how that was contributing to his safety.

But he didn’t. His friendship with Garvs had run out of gas, right there, right in front of him, after knowing the bloke for almost fi fteen years. Garvs wasn’t going to let him talk to Hannah, wasn’t going to let him stay in Jakkers for a second longer than he had to. For the fi rst time in his career Mac was not really being debriefed. He was being dismissed.

Mac thought back to the warning Banger Jordan had given them about offi ce guys being the most dangerous of all. He realised that it wasn’t the fact that Garvs had become an offi ce guy that had thrown him. What got his defensive instincts going was that Anton Garvey wanted a bigger offi ce.

Garvs left before fi nishing the last beer, the farewells were hollow.

Looking around the Lagerhaus, Mac thought about old times, thought about mates, thought about another drink. A hand waved from the bar. Keith, pointing down at the taps. Mac gave thumbs-up, thought, What the hell: last time in Jakkers with a false passport, I may as well go out with a king-size hangover. A real Barry Crocker.

He grabbed the Nokia, fi red it up as Keith approached with two steins in one hand. Mac pegged him as similar to himself: a small-town bloke who hadn’t been quite good enough to play footy for a living, so he’d had to fi nd something useful to do with himself.

Keith plonked down, slid the Becks over. Put out a hand: ‘Keith Cavanaugh.’

They shook, keeping it soft.

‘Richard Davis.’

They chatted, Keith had some stuff to get off his chest: like how do you stop the sex-slavers with all these Aussies and Yanks arriving with their hard currency and willing to pay a thousand dollars to rape a child? How was a mere cop from Victoria supposed to tear down the police, military and politicians who were either behind the trade or protecting it?

Keith kept shaking his head, not in a good way. Some of the stuff he’d been exposed to was well beyond how they did it in the Mallee. He had a fi ancee, but working up here was putting him off having kids.

Keith wanted to talk about ‘this thing’ that had gone pear-shaped.

Mac knew about the Lombok incident, even though Keith only alluded to it. In August a combined AFP-FBI-POLRI transnational sexual servitude taskforce had fi nally cornered a gang of child slavers in an old factory. The Aussie and American cops had only got that far because of the amount of information they’d kept from their POLRI colleagues.

In the last hours before the planned raid, the slavers were tipped off. When the Aussies and Yanks got there, the place was already ablaze, destroyed, the ‘evidence’ with it. The evidence in this case was an estimated eighty-three children, both genders, ages ranging from four to twelve.

Mac only knew how distressing it had been for the cops because his friend Jenny Toohey had described fi nding a dumpster behind the factory. It was fi lled with soft toys.

Women cops had an ability to turn that sort of thing into a stronger resolve to catch the bastards. Men found it much harder for some reason; hit the piss, got depressed, didn’t see out their rotation.

Jenny had been up here for years. She was one tough girl.

‘Take it easy, champ,’ Mac said as Keith shook and left to get back to his boys. He’d bet Keith already had an application in for stress leave. This just wasn’t his go.

Mac leaned back, had another look at the Nokia. Three messages: the fi rst two from Garvs – offi ce shit.

The last had been left little more than an hour ago.

Diane!

His heart raced as he listened, fl ustered. Diane was in Jakarta, staying with her dad at the British compound. Had some big client to schmooze. Mac smiled, he could have listened to that voice for hours.

Then came the clincher. ‘Richard, I didn’t hear back from you about my, er, message. Did you get it? I’ll be back on Thursday – can we talk then? We could go for a drink, right darling?’

Relief poured through Mac and he laughed at the ceiling – he adored the way she called him ‘darling’.

Mac tried to sober up. Diane thought he was in Sydney. He’d surprise her, but not now. He had no idea who was sitting at what listening posts.

He ordered a coffee, asked for Saba. The bar manager came over, went to a phone, came back, pointed at a small CCTV camera up near where the Glenfi ddich and Grey Goose lived. Mac looked at it for four seconds. Looked away.

Sipping on the coffee, Mac waited. Saba’s bodyguard came to the entry of the toilet corridor wearing a white trop shirt that didn’t hide the gun bulge as well as his last ensemble. He looked around slowly, glanced briefl y at Mac, fl icked his head very slightly.

Mac moved to the corridor and down to the security door. Took the pat-down and scraping behind the ears. They walked into the offi ce, out through the door that Sawtell had walked through fi ve days earlier.