Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac slumped back, sipped the beer, thought about what he had.

Not much. Tomorrow he’d fi nd out what was in the MPS warehouse in Makassar, hopefully. Right now he was fl ailing. He was also tired.

Rooted.

The phone rang. Jen got up, took the call, and by the sound of it the caller was in southern Thailand. Mac could hear the voice: high-pitched, male, hysterical. Jen talked him down, stayed calm. She was a natural leader. Mac had no doubt she’d make it to the upper echelons of the AFP. Maybe take a right turn and end up in PMC.

Suddenly something clicked.

The phone logs!

The phone logs Sawtell had brought out of the hotel in Palopo.

Mac had read them, got on the blower to his contact in TI and most of the numbers had pointed to Tenteno. But one had been in the Philippines, in an area of Metro Manila called Intramuros: trendy, expensive, latte-sipping, intellectual. Most important, it was coastal right on Manila Bay, with views of the container terminals if you were in the right building.

Jen said something gentle to the bloke on the other end, hung up, paused, big sigh. Made a quick call to someone else. This time her tone was less conciliatory. She was remonstrating.

She rang off, walked to the fridge, grabbed two more VBs. ‘Thai water police.’ She shook her head. ‘A bloody worry.’

When she sat down again Mac said, ‘What about the Philippines?

Manila? Anything out of there?’

Jen looked at the ceiling. ‘There was something I read today in a circular. Didn’t look like my go.’

‘What was it?’

‘Heist. Container. Whole shipment lost, unaccounted for.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘Containers go missing all the time. They’re not supposed to. Not after the Yanks went and spent all that money on the tracking protocols.

But stuff goes missing. They’re ports, and people work at ports.’

Mac looked at her. ‘So why was it circularised?’

Jenny shrugged.

‘I mean, what was in it? Where was it going?’

Jen stood, walked to the phone.

Mac piped up, ‘Umm, not a good idea.’

She clocked his embarrassed tone, did a double take. ‘Fuck, Mac. You people are too much! I’m a fucking federal cop! A senior federal cop!’

Mac looked away. It’d be good to be civvie again – weird, but good.

Jenny walked to the kitchen area, shaking her head. Pulled a Nokia out of a charger, made to turn it on. ‘I’m one of the good guys

– remember that part?’

Mac looked over, scratched the back of his head. ‘Uh, yeah… You got a personal one?’

Jenny shook her head, rolled her eyes like Are you people for real?

‘I’m serious,’ said Mac. ‘You got a non-Commonwealth phone?’

Now Jen had her hand on her hip, giving him the evils. Giving him the ice queen. Slight tooth-grinding motion in the mouth, she slowly shook her head.

Mac pulled out the cheapo pre-paid. ‘This should do.’

Jen stayed where she was. Mac had to get off the sofa, walk to her, pick up her hand and put the phone in it. Close the hand around it. She didn’t take her eyes off his face. Not hate – another thing, like his sister Virginia used to give him. Like the time he had to deal with the bloke who’d been grabbing her on the dance fl oor of a footy club bash, lifting her dress up and that sort of carry-on. Had asked the bloke to stop it which turned into Mac having to give the bloke a little something to go on with. Didn’t help that the drunken groper was Ginny’s boyfriend.

Mac and Jen stared at each other for thirty seconds. Mac needed this. Jenny didn’t.

‘Please,’ he said.

Jen looked down at the phone, mumbled something, shook her head and dialled AFP, Manila.

Mac had once vowed he wasn’t going to foul his own nest. That whatever he was asked to do, it wouldn’t involve mixing his personal life with his professional. The Service encouraged people to observe those limits. It was why you didn’t tell friends and family where you worked. When he started out Mac had imagined that the issue would be more to do with something that Frank was investigating that Mac would be asked to whitewash. But it had come down to another cop in his life: Jen. He’d just stepped over his line and he felt sick about it.

Jen came back to the sofa, sat down and put a white pad on her lap. ‘My guy says it was an unmarked ro-ro container ship, shipping for San Francisco.’

‘Ro what?’

Jen shrugged, used to the lingo. ‘You know – roll-on/roll-off.’

‘Unmarked? You mean no name?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Believe that?’

‘Just telling you what he said.’

Mac thought about it: unmarked or non-commercial ships were usually military, government.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Not much else. When the alarm went out the whole place was swarming with US Army. A section’s been shut down. Media blackout.

Local cops on the outer. There was a bunch of blokes with bio-hazards on – not that unusual.’

‘Serious?’

‘Yeah, but there are spills all the time at container terminals and you never quite know what’s leaking. They send them out in the suits and breathers just to be sure.’

‘US Army is normal?’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Does your guy know what’s in it?’

‘Nah – it’s hush-hush.’

‘Hushed up?’

‘Well…’

‘Come on, Jen.’

She looked at him like she might be going too far.

‘Okay. Gary was in Bangkok a couple of years ago, at a maritime security symposium – one of those events that the British put on.

Turns out one of the guys who gave a paper at the symposium is running the show at the Manila thing.’

‘Know who he is?’

‘Gary couldn’t be sure, but he was ninety per cent certain the guy was DIA.’ Jenny shrugged. Threw the pad aside.

The evening was over. Mac made a promise to himself; that he would make it up to Jen. She’d recovered from her annoyance, but Mac knew there were other things she wanted to discuss, possibly even the future and commitment. It might have been. Before Diane.

‘By the way, Jen,’ he said, stepping to the front door, ‘you don’t think I’m racist, do you?’

Jenny thought about that, and said, ‘No. No I don’t.’

They stared at one another, Jen imploring him with her beautiful dark eyes. Mac knew what she wanted. She wanted him to unload, talk about stuff like fear and regret. But he couldn’t. He felt blocked up, like he had a piece of concrete in his throat. As her eyes softened, his were getting harder – she reached out, he defended. He wanted to tell her he had another bird but he didn’t know how to say it.

So he said, ‘Thanks, mate,’ and did the Harold.

Jen shifted her weight. Both hands in the back pockets of her Levis.

He saw her staring at the ceiling as he slipped out. A proud girl.

I don’t cry, understand?

Mac took the third cab that stopped. He trusted too-easy cabs like he trusted fi sh and chips in Alice Springs. He went north to the retail district in downtown.

The DIA connection was odd. The Defense Intelligence Agency was a super-group connecting all the military intelligence outfi ts of the Pentagon into one collection and counterintelligence bureau. It was extremely powerful and operated in a far less publicly accountable way than the CIA. Globally connected, it had at its heart one of the most powerful networks of any intel organisation, with 1.4 million defence personnel who could become agents, co-optees and sources at any time. It could use more than seven hundred bases and facilities in forty countries. What was a DIA guy doing shutting down a section of Manila’s container terminal? What was in the missing container?

It spelled ‘United States military’ and Mac knew only one person under that heading who he could call right now: John Sawtell.