Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

‘Way better than those kids. That’s for sure.’

‘Believe it or not I’ve seen far worse. No corpses this time,’ said Jenny. ‘The guys are pretty happy about that.’

Mac nodded absently, no idea how to express what he was thinking.

‘Back to Sydney?’ asked Jenny.

‘In a couple of days. Gonna sleep fi rst.’

‘Where?’

Mac shrugged. ‘Marriott. Regent. Wherever the cab stops.’

Jenny looked at the bus. ‘Why don’t you sleep at the apartment?’ she said, voice light, just doing a mate a favour.

Mac nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said, keeping it light too.

‘Hang around for half an hour while I fi nish up here and I’ll drive you over.’

Mac went to say ‘Thanks’ but no sound came out.

Jen was about to get up when she noticed Sawtell, slumped between his knees, face in his hands.

Jenny put a comforting hand on his back, said, ‘Hello.’

Sawtell sat up like he’d just woken up, rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. His lips were a bit swollen.

‘I’m Jenny,’ she said, putting out her hand. Sawtell took it, mind elsewhere.

Jenny got him talking, about his wife, their plans to have kids, how he wondered if he could do that now. He talked about growing up in a wealthy country, taking everything for granted.

Sawtell gradually regained some of his colour, and asked Jenny how she could spend her life doing this.

‘See that container?’ said Jenny.

‘Yep.’

‘You want the bastards who did that caught?’

‘Damned right.’

‘You want the men who pay to rape those kids caught?’

‘Damned right I do.’

‘You want to know that a few kids of the thousands get saved from that?’

Sawtell nodded.

‘So do I,’ said Jenny, using Mac’s right shoulder to push herself to her feet.

‘Bye, John.’

‘See ya, Jenny.’

They shook.

‘And don’t let this joker lead you astray, okay?’ She pointed at Mac. ”Cos he will.’

She smiled, gave Mac that look. ‘Something about your arse?

On CNN?’

‘Fox News.’

Jenny shook her head, moved back to her crew.

Mac lay in the bath, let it soak, the sound of CNN echoing through the apartment. It was all Golden Serpent, with an ever-increasing roster of experts being dragged in from think tanks, universities, government and police to give their opinions. Mac felt wearied by most of the comments. The experts didn’t seem to know what they were doing on air any more than the anchor did.

It was fi ve-thirty pm in Singapore and the authorities still hadn’t declared the emergency over. The city was evacuated, Changi was closed and the port was locked up.

Coiffed reporters did live crosses from as far north as Tokyo and as far south as Sydney. Without a press centre to spoonfeed them, it was mostly only conjecture making it onto the tops and bottoms of the hour.

CNN was trying to link the Jakarta shoot-out with Golden Serpent. A good leap, but no one was confi rming it. And POLRI hadn’t confi rmed anything except the presence of two deceased males in a north Jakarta warehouse.

The whole thing was still in play, even though Mac knew almost for certain that the Twentieth would have had enough time to do what they did better than anyone else.

All the media had were two offi cers and two ‘engineers’ being escorted off the ship. They were still seeking confi rmation regarding the number of deceased still on board. The media would have to wait for the detectives, and the detectives had to wait for the CBNRE guys to give the all-clear. In the meantime, they had scores of shots of bio-hazard suits swarming over Golden Serpent ‘s container stacks.

Mac wondered about Edi’s inciting incident theory. Indonesian intel types tended to see Chinese motivations that Westerners might miss. But then again, some of the inciting incidents staged by intelligence organisations over the years were hardly in the realms of common sense. If nothing else, Edi’s outlook made a good fi t with what Wylie had told him on Golden Serpent, about Garrison referring to the VX bomb as an incident tailored to CNN.

Back in Sulawesi, Cookie B had gone immediately to the money.

As in: where’s Garrison’s payday? Now another Indonesian spook had bypassed Mac’s entire carefully assembled scenario to state the obvious: that someone stood to gain from making Singapore look insecure and easily attacked, and from a maritime source.

Mac ducked under the water, the taste of shit and bleach still in his mouth, gunfi re still ringing in his ears.

The knee didn’t feel too painful as he dried off. If it was going to be a problem, it would fl are up by morning.

Pulling the curtains, he turned off his mobile phone and crawled between clean sheets.

He mused briefl y about how strange it was to lie in Jenny’s bed thinking about Diane. Then fi nally, mercifully, sleep came.

Bacon, coffee and eggs fi lled Mac’s nostrils. He opened his eyes, not knowing where he was for a few seconds. The bedside clock said 7.20 am but he felt like he could sleep for another twenty-four hours.

‘Hey, sleeping beauty,’ said Jenny when Mac appeared in his undies. He went for a cheek kiss but she took it on the lips. Tasted of Close-Up, the red one.

Jenny was about to leave for work and there was a cooked breakfast for Mac ready on the table.

‘You know,’ she said, pulling back. ‘I liked coming home to a man in my bed, even if he was dead to the world.’

They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Then Mac said, ‘Umm, I liked it too.’

They both drew breaths. Six years of sex and so much not said.

She play-slapped him, laughing. ‘You!’

‘Me?!’ he said, laughing too.

‘Yes, you!’

‘I never done nothing.’

She gave him a look, like That’s the point, stupid.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

Mac nodded. ‘Still in one piece, can’t complain.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Jen.

Mac didn’t know if he was ready to talk about the children. ‘You know, what happened down there…’ He shook his head, the words not coming.

‘There could be a happy ending for this lot,’ said Jenny. ‘We think they’re from northern Cambodia and southern Laos, so there’s a chance of getting them back to their families.’

Jenny was probably putting a gloss on it to make him feel better, thought Mac, but he didn’t care. He wanted to believe there was a happy ending for those kids.

‘I’ll tell John. He’ll want to know that,’ said Mac.

Jenny’s eyes softened. She fi shed in her holster bag, came out with her spare keys. Put them in his hand, seeming a little embarrassed. ‘I, umm…’

Jenny Toohey was not a woman who gave her house keys to a man.

She started to say something, then rubbed at her eye, looked away.

‘Bloody pollen,’ said Mac.

‘It’s a shocker,’ agreed Jenny, then paused. ‘All that drama yesterday.

I forgot to tell you… I wanted to say to you, ‘cos if you ever, you know…’

Mac couldn’t tell her to forget it. Couldn’t bat this one away.

‘Umm, when I saw that bloke Paul and that bullet wound. And I realised what had happened down there, I…’

Mac put his right hand out. Took her left. She looked at the ceiling, took big gulps.

‘The life we choose, right?’ said Mac.

‘Or did it choose us?’ she said lightly, like it was meant to be a joke. But her heart wasn’t in it. Truth was, the protocol for people who ran the danger of being killed in their line of work was to gloss over the obvious. You made endless jokes about farts, penises, cross-dressing, gay sex, masturbation, constipation and incontinence – all of it to bring people closer without having to say, By the way, in case you’re shot tomorrow…