three children, both genders, ages ranging from four to twelve.
Mac only knew how distressing it had been for the cops because his friend Jenny Toohey had described fi nding a dumpster behind the factory. It was fi lled with soft toys.
Women cops had an ability to turn that sort of thing into a stronger resolve to catch the bastards. Men found it much harder for some reason; hit the piss, got depressed, didn’t see out their rotation.
Jenny had been up here for years. She was one tough girl.
‘Take it easy, champ,’ Mac said as Keith shook and left to get back to his boys. He’d bet Keith already had an application in for stress leave. This just wasn’t his go.
Mac leaned back, had another look at the Nokia. Three messages: the fi rst two from Garvs – offi ce shit.
The last had been left little more than an hour ago.
Diane!
His heart raced as he listened, fl ustered. Diane was in Jakarta, staying with her dad at the British compound. Had some big client to schmooze. Mac smiled, he could have listened to that voice for hours.
Then came the clincher. ‘Richard, I didn’t hear back from you about my, er, message. Did you get it? I’ll be back on Thursday – can we talk then? We could go for a drink, right darling?’
Relief poured through Mac and he laughed at the ceiling – he adored the way she called him ‘darling’.
Mac tried to sober up. Diane thought he was in Sydney. He’d surprise her, but not now. He had no idea who was sitting at what listening posts.
He ordered a coffee, asked for Saba. The bar manager came over, went to a phone, came back, pointed at a small CCTV camera up near where the Glenfi ddich and Grey Goose lived. Mac looked at it for four seconds. Looked away.
Sipping on the coffee, Mac waited. Saba’s bodyguard came to the entry of the toilet corridor wearing a white trop shirt that didn’t hide the gun bulge as well as his last ensemble. He looked around slowly, glanced briefl y at Mac, fl icked his head very slightly.
Mac moved to the corridor and down to the security door. Took the pat-down and scraping behind the ears. They walked into the offi ce, out through the door that Sawtell had walked through fi ve days earlier.
The room they entered looked like a store for booze and snacks.
It was cool, musty. Behind piles of cartons the bodyguard opened a security door using a key from a retractable key chain and hit the fl uorescent lights. There were a dozen black strongboxes bolted to the wall, each one the size of a mid-range TV set. The bodyguard made straight for the one marked 9, pulled out his key chain again, rattled through some keys and opened the box. Then he walked outside, standing where he could see Mac. He snarled slightly, reminding Mac of the small detail: this guy’s uglier brother was a professional cage fi ghter in Manila.
Mac slid out the drawer on its rails, lifted the lid which was hinged at the rear of the drawer. In the box was a typical assortment of passports, drivers’ licences, credit cards and guns. There was also a clear plastic seal-lock bag fi lled with cash. He grabbed the pile of Singapore dollars, and gave it a quick fan. He reckoned maybe three thousand. Trousered it. He grabbed a third of his rupiah, stashed that too.
The passports, drivers’ licences and credit cards were strapped into single units, held together lengthwise with rubber bands. He picked up one. The rubber band held a small stack of cards in the name of Brandon Collier, Vice president, Sales, Orion Forestry Consulting (Aust.). There was a passport, a NSW driver’s licence and a Visa card.
Mac had always worked under two main identities in this part of the world, but this was not one of them. He’d never used Collier as a name and the Service didn’t know it existed. Most people in his business had some sort of fail-safe identity and credit card. Some had their ‘pensions’ stashed in credit card accounts under these names, which ran out of banks in the Cook Islands or Fiji.
Mac didn’t have a ‘pension’. What he had was a valid incorporation of Orion Forestry Consulting in Singapore, with a DBS business Visa card in the name of Collier and Orion. The bank account was legit, so was the company. An old associate of his – Benny Haskell – had done the incorporation. Benny was one of the accountants who worked on the original incarnation of AUSTRAC, the Australian federal government’s money-tracking neural-net. Now he had a thriving banking-domicile practice, with an Australian solicitor, in Singapore.
Benny had spruiked the taxation benefi ts of incorporating in Singers but Mac had just wanted the banking secrecy laws. Besides, when his days with the Service were done, forestry consulting might be his fallback gig. There was certainly enough work to go around if things didn’t work out as a university lecturer.
He trousered the whole bundle, went to another bundle and pulled out a laminated ID card. It was an Australian Customs Service ID in the name of Richard Davis, allowing him access to bond stores and restricted parts of airports and container ports.
Picking a black toilet bag out of the bin, he motioned with his hand to the bodyguard. The guy swaggered over.
‘The Heckler, thanks, champ. Plus a clip,’ said Mac.
The bodyguard pulled out the Heckler amp; Koch P9S in the black nylon hip rig. Picked up one clip.
‘Can you load it?’ asked Mac.
The bodyguard sneered, handed Mac the clip. Mac loaded it himself from the box of Winchester. 45s in the bin. In Saba’s bar only one person ever touched a fi rearm, and that was Saba’s bodyguard. Mac wouldn’t get his Heckler until he was standing in the back alley.
Mac stood on the back steps, unzipped the black toilet bag. The bodyguard put the Heckler in it, looked left and right, stood back and shut the door.
Mac walked the blocks to the Aussie compound. He had a mild sense of being followed but it felt like light surveillance. Felt like Garvey doing something for Mac’s own safety.
A knock sounded at the door at 2.15 am. Mac was showered, shaved and had only a mid-sized hangover. It was Garvey’s lackey, a bloke called Matt. They piled into a red Commodore, hit the airport freeway.
Matt was about thirty, tall, Anglo, educated. He was confi dent without being full of himself – a good lad to put on Mac’s case. Mac wondered if he had someone on the plane with him, or another tail waiting at Singers. Wondered if Garvs was just testing Matt, to see if he had the ticker.
They parked in the consular annexe of Soekarno-Hatta, went through the consular security clearance and into the consular ticketing for Qantas. The girl behind the counter was a pretty local and Mac hammed it up with a back injury, trying to get an upgrade to Singers.
The federal government had an eight-hour policy for travelling business class: you fl ew under that and you fl ew in the back, unless you were SES. Jakarta-Singers was way under eight hours.
The girl didn’t smile, didn’t react. But she gave him the upgrade.
‘Wish they did that for me,’ said Matt.
They walked into the main concourse. It was 3.20 am but the place was packed. Lines for the Qantas fl ights stretched out of view.
Kids moaned, dragged on their mums’ arms. Other kids snored on top of bags on the trolleys. They passed a group of Aussies with a state hockey team emblem across their cabin luggage. Mac slipped the wink to one of the blokes. ”Zit going, champ?’
Mac walked towards the huge security clearance section that transitioned passengers from the public concourse into immigration and the airline lounges. It stretched the width of the building and looked like a tollgate for humans. POLRI stalked back and forth with the low-hanging peaks on their caps. German shepherds, beagles, metal detector wands. Colt M4 carbines hanging across their chests.
Mac made a note of the M4. The Indon government’s anti-terrorism unit, Delta 88, had been equipped by the US government with fl ash new toys such as the M4 assault rifl e and Mac was glad to see they were actually being deployed rather than sold on by a general with a Ferrari habit.
Mac turned to Matt, shook his hand. ‘Thanks, champ. Let you get back to sleep now, huh?’
Matt smiled. They both knew Matt was going straight back to a listening post where he’d give regular updates to Garvs.
Mac had replaced his wheelie bag with a small black Puma backpack that had been lying in his room. Inside was the Service Nokia and the toilet bag, minus the Heckler. That was in the mail with his ovies and Hi-Tecs, posted from the Australian diplomatic compound by the night manager, Conzo. Conzo was an Indon who Mac had
