Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Rami turned, saw the POLRI guy and the shepherd and ran to his cab. Mac followed, leaned into the back seat, picked up the black pack.

‘Here you go, champ,’ said Mac, handing over the last hundred-dollar greenback. Rami smiled, took the money, turned to his right, wound down the window to talk with the POLRI guy. Mac noticed Rami averting his eyes, not actually looking at the cop. A car parked outside a public building was no big deal in Australia. In Indonesia it meant plenty, and Rami obviously didn’t want to be mistaken for someone with an ammonium nitrate experiment going on in the back seat.

Rami put the cab into drive, and Mac said, ‘Mate, I just realised I need a blazer for my meeting in Makassar. You take Singapore dollars?’

He nodded at the blazer hanging on the rear passenger’s handle.

‘Um, yeah. How much?’

Mac showed a wad. Said, ‘There’s fi ve hundred there. For the college fund.’

Rami smiled. ‘Sure.’

Walking into T1 in his too-small dark blazer, Mac heard an announcement that included the words ‘Ujung Pandang, Makassar’.

He guessed the fl ight would be boarding in fi ve minutes, closed in twenty.

He found the biggest group of travellers and mingled through them, up into T1-B and T1-C. His stomach churned with fear but it helped him focus. He hopped from group to group, fi nding camoufl age, then he saw what he was looking for: Matt, walking away towards the end of the T1 hall. Mac watched him stop, talk to the breasts of a pretty Kartika stewardess.

Boob-talker.

He looked back, got on his tippy toes, saw the ASIS bird back at T1-A. Mac realised what Matt had done: he was simply covering the two departure gates that led into the departure lounges. He was waiting for Mac – knew he was heading for Makassar, knew it wouldn’t be on the major airlines.

Someone knew.

Mac would have to go through them, and if they’d been doing their job they would have looked through the surveillance tapes from Changi and realised what Mac now looked like.

Mac couldn’t get through.

And he couldn’t not go to Makassar.

He had about two minutes to make a decision. He hadn’t even checked in.

He saw a local bloke in a sports jacket and cream chinos. Black shoes, strong build, wide in the stomach and hips. Five-ten, about Mac’s age. Radio on his belt. A cop.

Mac drilled further into the large group, pushed his hand into his pack and came out with the Heckler and the hip rig. He wouldn’t have time to set the whole thing up, thread it through all the belt loops, so he stripped the belt component out of the holster and put the holster and Heckler under his belt, just in front of his right hip bone. He took the specs off, trousered them. Then he edged up to the cop, keeping his back to the ASIS bird. Pulling out the Customs ID in his right hand, he folded it back slightly to obscure the picture page.

Then he leaned into the cop, kept his voice down. ‘Federal Agent Collier, AFP.’

He showed the bent-back ID, fl ashing the photo and badging, but looking around – furtive, serious – as he put the ID into his inside blazer pocket. The cop looked Mac up and down, looked into him.

Mac faked it out, leaned into the bloke’s ear. ‘This is embarrassing, but my radio’s rooted. One of those useless American jobs.’

The cop warmed to that. All cops have problems with radios. All cops think it’s the fault of some offi ce guy who’s trying to save money.

Mac did a cop-like hands on hips, let the bloke see the Heckler, put his hand out. ‘Name’s Brandon – with the JOC.’

‘Samo.’

They shook and Mac watched the wheels whirr, watched Samo realise that he was talking with someone from the Jakarta Operations Centre. Mac had Samo’s attention: this wasn’t about catching mules or credit card fraudsters. JOC oversaw the counter-terrorism joint effort between Indonesia and Australia.

‘Some pen-pusher’s still lying in bed, getting his beauty sleep, huh?’ snarled Mac. ‘And here’s us out here at sparrow’s, and they give us radios that don’t work!’

Samo shook his head, looked away disgusted. Mac wondered how long a graveyard roster lasted for Jakarta cops. A month? Two months?

Working through the early hours hurt no matter what country you lived in.

‘They got a million people a week going through this airport, and I have a team of ten! Ten! I don’t believe. I don’t believe!’

Enlisted.

Samo was just getting going. ‘You say that to senior person, but they not know. Why they care?’

He did the big Javanese shrug, a gesture that made the Gallic shrug look like a mere tic.

‘My people are all over the shop,’ said Mac. ‘Can I get some backup on my detail?’

‘Sure,’ said Samo.

Matt and the ASIS bird walked towards one another from opposite ends of T1. Matt was wearing a pair of dark chinos and a pale blue polo shirt. No gun – ASIS offi cers weren’t allowed them unless they were S-2. The bird was in her Levis and an Aussie surfer T-shirt.

Mac was waiting for them. As they got within twenty metres of one another, Mac broke out of the group he was camoufl aged in and walked straight up to Matt. Into his face. Pretended to be surprised and scared. He turned, ran.

Matt hadn’t been sent out to physically restrain Mac. He’d been sent to do words in shell-likes and escort him to a Sydney-bound fl ight. But he reacted like anyone would. He gave chase. Mac pretended to run for three strides and saw the ASIS bird start to react towards him. Mac suddenly stopped and turned. Matt was caught unawares, couldn’t stop his momentum. Mac grabbed him by the front of the polo shirt and the forearm, pulled the young bloke down on him.

They went to the white lino. Matt struggled, but he was on top of Mac and couldn’t get off.

Mac smiled in the youngster’s face. Said, ‘Steady there, fella. Steady!’

To Samo it would look like Matt was attacking.

‘Fuck you, McQueen. Fuck you!’ said Matt as he grimaced with the effort of the struggle.

Mac made sure he couldn’t move. The ASIS bird made it to the two men and didn’t know what to do, so Mac grabbed her ankle with his free hand. Made it look like she was stomping him as she struggled for balance.

‘Help!’ yelled Mac, and Samo’s team moved in.

The fi rst one to hit was a female called Suzi. She had a ten-inch snout and a set of teeth like a wolf. She had something personal against Matt’s rib cage, thought Mac. The boob-talking thing must have done the rounds.

Mac sat at the front of the 737, which he didn’t like. But he did his breathing exercises and attempted to relax, analyse everything, see if there was something about his life he hadn’t completely screwed up in the past fi ve days. The Soekarno-Hatta madness had worked out but in the excitement he didn’t have enough rupiah to buy the ticket so he’d paid with the DBS Visa card.

The Service and the CIA and anyone else who had been taking an interest in Mac over the last few days would now have a known alias and an electronic funds trail. Which meant he was probably travelling into a welcoming committee in Makassar without a weapon – he’d dumped the Heckler rig in a concourse bin at Soekarno-Hatta after the kerfuffl e made the security bulls move in.

Sometime during the next twenty-four hours he’d be going back to the Pantai. An option with its own problems.

Mac munched on fresh fruit, drank bad coffee. Thought about where Sabaya might fi t.

Mac had started with the Service at the end of the Cold War, and in those days the emphasis had been on trade, fi nance, technology and political infl uence. It was clever, intricate espionage, and it was what Mac was really trained for: infi ltration, surveillance, covert ops, snatches, provocations, bribes and blackmail. Mac’s mentors were Cold Warriors