Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac didn’t know what to do, so he hugged her, feeling her wet nose and eyes against his neck. She burrowed in, sniffl ed. Held tight.

Then she moved her mouth up to his ear.

Wasn’t till she was out the door that he realised she’d said I love you.

The bacon and eggs were Nirvana, the toast bliss, the freshly brewed coffee outstanding. Mac wolfed the lot and chased it with an orange.

He turned on the television and saw the Singapore story still unfolding, but he muted it – still a bit lost in the moment with Jenny. Then he rinsed plates and put them in the dishwasher, wiped down the breakfast table and the benches and cleaned the sink with some Ajax.

Jenny was a great cop but a lousy housekeeper.

He took a long shower, pulled his ovies out of the washing machine and put them in the dryer. If he got on a fl ight that day, he might buy some threads. But if he was kosher with the embassy, he would see what he had lying around in his locker in the compound.

For the fi rst time in weeks he had a sense of time and ease and it felt good to have some tucker in his belly, some sleep under his belt.

He hit the sound on the TV and saw the cable news services still hadn’t fi nalised the Golden Serpent story. One of the terminals at Singapore had reopened for a few exceptional shipments, but Keppel and Brani were still locked down and the city was evacuated with martial law in force. Sixty or seventy ships were standing off in the Singapore Strait.

Changi was only dealing in government and military aircraft.

Something was holding up the declaration that the emergency was over. The Singapore government would be climbing the walls with frustration, thought Mac.

Then it came. Fox News had found a Singaporean politician who was lambasting the government’s lack of preparedness for a maritime terror incident. And the clincher… Singapore needs closer military ties with its friends. And he wasn’t talking about the Americans. The biggest trump that the pro-China lobby held in Singapore was the fact that the

Navy had a policy of not informing host countries of arrival times for their ships. It made it easy for the pro-China lobby to typify the Americans as arrogant and interested in their own geopolitical game rather than the wellbeing of Singapore’s economy.

Another Singaporean man came on, from a commerce asso ciation, talking about a realistic defence policy.

To Mac’s ear it sounded rigged. The words ‘friends’ and ‘realistic’

– when they were used in the Singapore context – were terms straight from the MSS propaganda manual. The Chinese had spent thirty years infi ltrating all layers of Singapore’s political, bureaucratic, military and commercial elites. Which was why the Americans found it impossible to get Singapore to become a full client-state.

Edi had been right, thought Mac. Golden Serpent was starting to look like an inciting incident.

Catching sight of Jen’s phone charger, Mac grabbed his Nokia from the bedroom, brought it through and plugged it in. Booting up, the envelope graphic appeared. He sat on the sofa, hit ‘messages’.

The fi rst one was a text: Call me urgent. Paul. It had been sent at 10.30 the previous evening.

The next message was an invitation to call his service provider’s voicemail service. Mac dialled in. It was from Don, the DIA guy, wanting to talk quick-smart about ‘our friends’. He left a number, said the secret handshake was ‘fi refl y’.

Mac started with Don. The number was a global-connect free call that took him to what sounded like the Pentagon.

‘It’s Richard Davis here, Southern Scholastic Books. Could I speak with Don in Defense Intelligence Agency, please?’

‘What’s the time there, Mr Davis?’ said the woman.

‘Firefl y.’

‘Thank you, sir. Connecting you now.’

The connection buzzed and clicked.

‘Don? It’s Mac.’

‘Shit! Thanks for getting back to me, McQueen.’

He sounded like crap, like a man who hadn’t slept.

‘How can I help you?’ asked Mac.

‘We clear?’ asked Don, meaning were they on a secure line.

‘Personal cell phone,’ said Mac.

Don hesitated.

‘I bought it three days ago from a convenience store. It’s clear,’ said Mac.

‘Listen. Okay. So…’ started Don, clearly jangled.

‘Everything okay?’ asked Mac. ‘CNN’s not saying it’s over. It is over, right?’

‘Umm, our friends.’

‘Yep.’

‘They got into the container.’

Mac assumed they had, to wire their IED. ‘Yep?’

‘And we’ve disabled the device.’

‘Yep?’

‘And we’ve secured the agent.’

‘Yep?’

‘Umm – you sure this is clear?’

‘It’s clear.’

Don cleared his throat. ‘McQueen, we shipped one hundred and eighty bombs.’

‘Yep?’

‘There’s only a hundred and seventy-nine bombs in that container.’

There was a big pause.

‘Shit. You know where it is?’ asked Mac.

There was a sudden commotion, Hatfi eld bellowing in the background. Mac could envisage the Chinook’s situation room: incoming calls from the Oval Offi ce, the Singapore President and the Pentagon. Soldiers, spooks and scientists wincing at having the paint stripped off them.

Mac thought fast. ‘Have you searched the seabed? They may have tossed it, trying to extend this as long as possible.’

‘We’re got divers down there. But once you start on that, you have to retrace its route. We’ve got the SONAR birds doing that as well. It’s not there. We’re assuming our friends are travelling with it.’

Mac exhaled. ‘What about the ship? It’s a big tub, lots of areas to conceal something like that.’

‘All over it with explosive detectors. Been going all night with revolving shifts. We’ve got our Europe team here too. Nothing. It’s with them.’

Mac thought about the ro-ro ship, the one he and Paul assumed had been hijacked by Sabaya.

‘Look, here’s a left-fi eld one, okay?’ said Mac. ‘On our way into Singers yesterday we came through Brani Island and there was this large unmarked ro-ro ship on the south side of the island.’

‘We searched that area, I think,’ said Don.

‘I don’t think they dropped the VX bomb there. But my hunch is they stole the ship. They were last seen motoring for Brani Island on a tender boat fi rst thing in the morning. The Golden Serpent offi cers told us that,’ said Mac.

‘Could have been getting a helo from Brani or Sentosa,’ said Don.

‘In that case you’ll have to check fl ight logs. They were going to controlled airspace that morning because of Xiong coming in so air traffi c control would have been noticing everything.’

‘You said the ro-ro ship was unmarked?’

‘Yeah. No name, no shipping line, couldn’t see any fl ags. If it’s unmarked then there’s something fi shy about it. Like your transporter for the VX, right?’

‘Okay.’

‘The thing to do is get the Singaporeans to tell us exactly what the ship is for, who owns it and why it was docked there. We have to get access to that warehouse, too.’

‘Warehouse?’ asked Don.

‘Yeah, the tailgate of the ship was down and I heard sounds in this security building. It’s built like a bunker. You’ll know what I mean when you see it.’

‘Okay.’

‘If we can identify the ship then we have something to chase.

And if we know what’s in that warehouse, we have some kind of clue about where they’re headed.’

‘Think I can swing that,’ said Don.

‘The thing to remember,’ said Mac, ‘is that these guys had the chance to do what Garrison did and just fl y away to another country.

But if I’m right, they’ve taken the most conspicuous escape they could have taken.’