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…
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
US
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.
