The switchboard bloke came on and Mac asked for Captain John Sawtell. Mr Switchboard said, ‘No can do,’ like he was relishing it.
When Mac asked why not, the bloke said, ‘He’s operational.’
Mac thought back to their last conversation. Sawtell had said he was on stand-by to go into Manila. Now the CBNRE boys needed more special forces? It must have turned weird.
‘Can you patch me through?’ asked Mac. ‘It’s urgent.’
‘Sorry, sir. Can’t do that from a civilian line.’
Mac knew the rules and why they existed. If you had the right gear and a bit of luck you could pinpoint a military handset from a civilian-originated call. Not something most people would think about, but a handy tool for terrorists and spies.
‘Can I get a message to him?’ Mac pushed.
‘I can try, sir, but no guarantees.’
Mac gave him a mobile number and the Indonesian country code.
He didn’t want to do it that way, but since the I-team had found him he fi gured there wasn’t much cover left to blow.
‘Tell him I’ve got something down here that the Twentieth are going to be very interested in, okay?’
Sonny wanted to move out. He gestured at Mac. ‘Let’s go, Chalks – got something you might want to see.’
Sonny, Hemi and Billy stowed real quick and made for the door.
In their grey ovies they looked like the Beagle Boys.
Mac lingered, wanting to ask more questions. Sonny stood at the door with a Glock behind his back and fl icked his head at Mac.
Impatient.
Mac held his hand up and, turning back to Boo, asked, ‘Mate, how did you track me to Makassar?’
Boo shrugged. ‘Didn’t.’
Mac looked at Sonny, and Boo got the picture quick-smart.
‘You know, Macca, let the mountain come to Mohammad,’ said Boo.
‘What the fuck’s he talking about?’ Sonny demanded.
Mac said nothing.
‘We didn’t have to chase you, mate,’ said Boo. ‘Just sit back and wait for you to come to Garrison.’
Sonny let the door spring shut, came straight over, got in Boo’s face, fi st clenched. ‘Garrison?! What the fuck you know about Garrison, huh Chalks?’
Mac put his hand out to pull Sonny back, said, ‘Boo, why were you tailing Garrison?’
Boo shrugged. He was into territory that was now confusing him too. ‘We came in from Tokyo couple of nights ago. Jakarta put us on you; briefed us on Garrison.’
Mac still didn’t get it. ‘Yeah?’
‘The theory was since you were associated with Garrison, if we could fi nd him then you’d be around the shop somewhere.’
Mac was incredulous. ‘ What? I’m not associated with Garrison.
They sent me out here to kill him fi ve days ago! Jesus Christ!’
Boo shrugged. Sorry.
Mac pulled his temper back a notch. ‘Who briefed you, Boo?
Garvey? Urquhart?’
‘Nah. Internal, APS.’
‘Who?’
‘Steinhardt and that sheila with the bloke’s haircut.’
‘No one from the Service?’
Boo shook his head. ‘They met us as at the airport, wanted us into Makassar quick-smart.’
Mac breathed out. He’d been set up. Getting briefed at the airport or a bar was how it worked when someone didn’t want the order taped and logged. It was like a briefi ng that had never happened, a
‘tasking’ that never existed. He’d bet the Australian Protective Service had no record of Boo’s assignment and no paper trail linking it to ASIS. All that would remain was a verbal connection between Mac and Garrison. It was as good as saying that Alan McQueen was rogue.
Mac rubbed his temples with his left hand. He had to think, had to think.
Sonny stepped in, menacing, gave Boo that look, said, ‘Where’s Garrison? Where is he right now?’
Boo shrugged.
Sonny prepped a straight right and Mac leapt in.
‘Mate, give me a chance,’ said Boo, holding his good hand in front of his face. ‘Last I saw of Garrison, he was getting on a speedboat down at Hatta.’
‘When?’ said Sonny.
‘This morning, ‘bout ten to eight.’
‘Yeah?’ said Sonny, his nostrils fl aring.
Mac saw fear in Boo’s eyes. ‘Listen, Boo, you and I – we’ve been set up against each other. Right? Me and Sonny, we’ve been chasing Garrison. We’re not with him, right? Had a gunfi ght with his boys three nights ago,’ said Mac.
Boo nodded.
‘So Sonny isn’t going to kill you, right?’ said Mac, turning to Sonny for assurance.
Sonny said, ‘Not if someone tells me what the fuck’s goin’ on,’ said Sonny.
‘Okay, we watched them load up the speedboat – about a forty footer – with six large gear bags. An Asian bloke seemed to be running the show. There was a girl…’
Mac was getting impatient. ‘What happened then?’
‘They got in the boat, three of them, and took off west.’
‘Out to sea?’
‘Like there was no tomorrow.’
Mac could feel Sonny getting restless. Cookie didn’t pay him to try hard, he paid him for results. The way it sounded, Garrison – the walking payday for Cookie – had just sailed off into nowhere. Mac thought about the missing piece of it all. ‘Boo, what puts Garrison together with me? Where did that come from?’ he said.
‘He’s been porking your missus – didn’t you know?’
Mac’s jaw dropped.
‘She was the one on the boat,’ continued Boo. ‘I was coming to that. On the boat with Garrison. Tall, blonde. Big sheila.’
CHAPTER 26
Mac had only been gulled by a female once in his career and that was early days, in China. Part of his early training with ASIS had seen him infi ltrating the Chinese Cultural Exchange Program, which was still a big tool for the People’s Republic into the 1990s.
The cultural exchanges and scholarships had become a joke. The Commies would announce that some academic, teacher, political researcher or journalist from a Western country had won one of their friendship junkets and then bring them over to China for a couple of weeks of offi cial wining and dining. They would tour them around the countryside, get them drinking at all opportunities, and wear them down with isolation, fatigue and fl attery. Then they’d lure them into compromising situations and record the whole thing, and when those people were settled back in Melbourne or San Francisco or Auckland, contact them and have a quiet word. The Chinese liked it best when their leftie was closet gay, liked children or had a money problem, gambling debts or a secret heroin habit. Strangely, a sense of being underappreciated was often the best lever for creating an agent.
The cultural exchange program was an old Soviet trick that had already been overdone by the KGB in the 1960s and 1970s, producing a stream of Marxists in culturally infl uential positions. But the MSS was still having fun
