Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

– people like Rod Scott – and their craft was the subtle stuff. Finding key infl uencers in South-East Asia and turning them, fi nding the bad guys and making them doubles, manipulating the media as much as possible

– pretty simple when you could ‘leak’ the inside story to journalists at the Jakarta Marriott, see it turn up in print the next day.

The Service would fi nd where the illegal technology transfers were taking place, and why a rival nation might want a certain microprocessor or titanium self-sealing O-ring. In those days, discovering why the Chinese or Koreans were trying to infl uence a certain Indonesian political or bureaucratic fi gure was almost as informative as if you had one of your people inside their organisation.

The main mission was to secure South-East Asia against Chinese political, military and economic hegemony.

That was during the 1990s. The Chinese economy was in double-digit growth and their MSS people were stealing as much mid-level technology as they could from the US, Germany, Japan, the UK and France. The Chinese became brazen but they were stealing ‘secrets’ that were well behind the cutting edge – sometimes three or four years out of date. Mac remembered the time a group of Chinese posing as scientists had followed a photographic and imaging trade show around the South-East Asian circuit, stealing as much as they could.

The scientists were going down to the Agfa booth, pretending to be looking at something and dipping their ties in an improved fi xing solution. The Service lost interest in technology transfers when Mac and others realised that the technology companies were employing Indonesian and Malaysian go-betweens to fence illegal technology transfers. The companies were making money from the Chinese by selling them old rope. It took the fun out of it.

Mac had two main identities during this era: textbooks executive and forestry consultant. Textbooks allowed you cover for just about any trade show or discussion with a government offi cial. And forestry gave you access to the interior of countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines while creating an excuse to be around ports, rail yards and trucking depots. In the embassy, he was Alan McQueen, second assistant trade attache. He was plain old Macca with a face that blended in the crowd.

But when September 11 happened, ASIS hit a snag. The Prime Minister’s offi ce needed a ton of intel and analysis, and they needed it yesterday. They needed counter-terrorism intelligence, what was known as CT. Australia was camped on the doorstep of the world’s largest Muslim nation, which meant some fast re-aligning of regional interaction. It meant knowing what the hell was going on. And the people with the CT answers weren’t the spy agencies of ASIS or ASIO or the military intel operations. The organisation with both the intelligence and operations reach into Muslim South-East Asia was the Australian Federal Police. Which is why Mac had found himself hunting Abu Sabaya. The Service needed to win back some infl uence and favour in Canberra by proving it could partake in America’s ‘War on Terror’. And the Service dreamed up an adventure.

Mac was in the middle of a dangerous infi ltration of a Chinese front company called Mindanao Forest Products when he was called into a meeting at the embassy in Manila one afternoon. Sitting in the embassy intel section meeting room when Mac walked in was Tony Davidson, director of the Asia-Pacifi c region. A large grey-haired bloke with jowls who had once opened the bowling for Western Australia, Davidson was the spook who controlled the spooks across India, China and South-East Asia – Australia’s most important region. The ASIS station chief for the Philippines, Joe Imbruglia, leapt up to greet Mac, who was dusty, sweaty. Imbruglia had one of those smiles Mac’s mother used to give him when friends popped over unannounced. It said, ‘Please be nice?’

Mac had liked Tony Davidson immediately. He had a soft handshake, oozed power and confi dence, and he was one of the few intel chiefs left in the Western world who actually had some operational experience. Davidson had ignored his lackeys, leaned his large forearms on his thighs, and spoke like it was just Mac in the room.

‘Tell me about Sabaya,’ he said.

Mindanao Forest Products had started as a name on Mac’s to-do list.

It was a known front company for the Chinese government’s attempt to control its offshore primary produce sources, timber being one of them. At some stage Mac was going to fi nd a way to infi ltrate some of these organisations, maybe see how far Filipino offi cials were implicated. Mindanao Forest Products wasn’t special in his list. But before he could infi ltrate the company, Mac took a phone call which led straight to Abu Sabaya’s people.

In one of those weird twists of the intel world, Mac had got a call for Thomas Winton, Goanna Forestry Consulting. It was a Service front company. You gave out the card, you played the part but you never expected to be taken seriously as a professional. Now, a representative of Mindanao Forest Products had asked to meet him. Someone wanted his forestry expertise. He would get to invoice and everything.

The fronts for Mindanao Forest Products met Mac at the Peninsula Hotel in Manila. Mac had taken Kleinwitz, the accountant. The fronts had a problem. They had a forestry concession for Mindanao – the Muslim-dominated island of southern Philippines – but they couldn’t log the place.

Mac was confused. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Because they stole our machinery.’

‘They’, as it turned out, were Abu Sabaya’s crew: Abu Sayyaf.

The Chinese had got their wires crossed, had thought that some casual baksheesh in Manila would carry weight in the boonies of Mindanao.

It didn’t.

Sabaya was an economic force. He was known to the world as a terrorist who ordered bombings, kidnappings and beheadings as a way of securing Mindanao as a Muslim state separate from Manila.

But Sabaya also operated a traditional protection service – he was a person who did for foreign loggers and miners in Mindanao what Cookie Banderjong did for those people in Sulawesi. You didn’t pay the man, you didn’t get protected.

‘So why don’t you pay him?’ Mac had asked.

The head guy had shrugged. ‘Don’t know where these people are.’

Abu Sabaya was no dummy. The shareholders and CEO of the forestry company were no names he’d ever heard of. His bankers and accountants ran the databases, did the numbers. Couldn’t get to the bottom of who ran Mindanao Forest Products. So Sabaya stole all the logging and hauling equipment shipped in for use in the Malaybalay region. Then he sat on US$10 million worth of plant and machinery and waited for the Chinese to come to him.

‘That’s what the Chinese wanted me to do,’ Mac told Davidson.

‘Find Sabaya, broker an agreement, get the machinery back and get the logging started.’

Davidson looked at him. ‘How you doing?’

‘Logging’s started. First invoice was paid,’ said Mac, then winked.

Davidson laughed, pulled back and looked at a very nervous Imbruglia. ‘An intelligence offi cer out there making money – the accountants are going to love that, eh Joe?’

Imbruglia was sweating, nervous, not a man who understood how fi eld people preferred to interact. All he knew was that one of the most powerful men in Australian intelligence was in his meeting room, having a laugh with his most independent-minded offi cer. An offi ce guy’s nightmare.

Davidson’s face slackened. He turned to an offsider who handed him a piece of paper. Davidson looked at the paper, handed it to Mac.

Mac, on high alert, looked at it, whistled low.

‘Had a meeting last night with some people from the American side,’ said Davidson, leaning back and sliding down in the Aussie hardwood chair. ‘They’re going in hard in Mindanao – already in build-up mode.’