He took a few sips of the coffee and when he was calm he hit redial on the clean Nokia and waited.
Joe picked up on the fourth ring.
‘Can’t talk now,’ whispered Joe. ‘Call back, okay?’ and he hung up.
Putting the clean phone on the table, Mac picked up the Service Nokia and was about to dial when he changed his mind, grabbed the clean Nokia and called KL directory. The call-centre person connected him direct to the George Institute, a government-funded research facility in George Town, Penang.
The George Institute was supposed to do medical-related work on radiological medicine, and sometimes did, but it was better known as a nuclear weapons skunk works that did a lot of contract trials and tests on behalf of the US Department of Defense. Three months after the September 11 attacks, the Bush White House had launched its Nuclear Posture Review, which changed US nuclear policy from
‘pre-emptive nuclear war’ based on incontrovertible evidence to
‘preventative nuclear war’ based on a belief that such a strike might be necessary. The Yanks had started the nuclear arms race again and a lot of countries and companies were making billions from the technology upgrade from the 1980s.
Mac asked for the extension and the phone was picked up on the second ring.
‘Hello, who is this?’ came the slightly paranoid voice Mac remembered from his Ukrainian engineer friend in Iraq.
‘Vikkie!’ yelled Mac. ‘How the hell are ya?’
There was a pause and then Viktor clicked. ‘McQueen! You mad Orssie!’
Mac asked how Vik and his new family were going.
‘Still kicking and screaming,’ announced Vik with confi dence.
When Mac and the Ukrainian engineer both realised they were being moved on from INVO for failure to stick with the lies they were supposed to be telling, they’d had a huge night on the piss after Mac told Viktor that in Australia a sacking had to be endured with a certain vigour. ‘Gotta go out kicking and screaming, right, Vikkie?’
Viktor had never heard that piece of Strine and was fascinated with how it sounded. People who had grown up under the Commies were astounded there was even a term for that kind of defi ance, let alone that it was a proud character trait. It had become part of Vik’s lexicon that night in Basra and Mac smiled to think he was still using it.
After the catch-up chit-chat, Mac got down to business. ‘Mate, I’ve set up a gmail account in the name of that bloke who poked you in the chest that night in the hotel car park. Only I’ve put the names in reverse order, okay?’
Vik listened, focusing in on the Pommie spy who tried to make him change an inspection report one night to ensure that a tractor part was recorded as a centrifuge arm.
‘The password is VIK7979,’ said Mac. ‘Open the fi rst message, and when you’ve read it, delete it, okay Vik?’
‘Sure, McQueen.’
‘And, mate, if you have a computer outside the Institute -‘
‘I get this,’ said Viktor, long enough under the Soviets to know what was going on.
They rang off, with Vik promising to respond within the hour.
The curry fi sh arrived and, as he ate, Mac’s clean Nokia rang.
He took the call and didn’t stuff about. ‘Joe – Akbar’s dead,’ he whispered.
There was a pause, two seconds of dead air.
‘You there?’ asked Mac.
‘Yeah, mate, yeah,’ came Joe’s voice.
‘So, Akbar -‘
‘Yeah, look Macca,’ said Joe, searching for a tone. ‘Yeah – Akbar.’
It was uncharacteristic for Joe to stumble. Before being restreamed into ASIS management and becoming a controller, he’d been a top-notch fi eld guy out of Beijing. Joe was fl uent in Cantonese and Mandarin at a time when Foreign Affairs had Australians who generally only spoke one or the other. He used to joke that, because he grew up in a house with a Calabrian mother and a Roman father, he had to balance peasant Italian with the highfalutin language of the metropole. He saw the same distinction between China’s two main languages – he didn’t see a drama. After Joe got married he’d pulled back a bit and then when the fi rst of his three kids arrived, he asked for a desk job – Wife’s Orders.
‘So, you saw it – I mean Akbar?’ asked Joe.
‘Confi rmed,’ said Mac, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. ‘Had eyes.’
‘Fuck!’
‘What I said.’
Joe heaved a breath. ‘Who?’
‘One of Hassan’s crew. Shot him in the back rather than let him be taken by the BAIS team.’
‘Jesus!’ Joe spat, a cross between amazed and disgusted.
‘So you know about Hassan?’ asked Mac, trying to get Joe to connect the dots.
‘Yep.’
‘Know he’s one of Doctor Khan’s operators?’
Joe sighed. ‘Look…’ he started, then trailed off.
‘Joe, we’re talking about people who sell enriched uranium.’
‘McQueen -‘
‘Abu Samir is part of the crew. Did you know that, mate? He’s JI, case you were wondering.’
‘Okay, so look -‘ Joe started again.
‘- we’ve got an atomic weapons dealer running around with Jemaah Islamiyah and they’ve already bombed Kuta, killed a carload of BAIS guys and assassinated an Osama bagman -‘
‘Macca -‘
‘So what the fuck’s going on?’ snapped Mac.
‘Mate, some people have just joined me, I’ll get back ASAP.’
‘What’s the mission, now?’ asked Mac.
‘Stay put, help BAIS fi nd the other -‘
‘Other?’ asked Mac.
But Joe had hung up.
CHAPTER 16
Mac had a friend in Medan by the name of Johnny Hukapa, who owned a tour company with his father. To the public, the owners of Sunshine Tours were your friendly guides to Lake Toba and Gunung Leuser National Park. To Mac, Johnny Hukapa was a former SAS soldier whose main source of income now came from bodyguarding the gold and gem merchants who made their trips into the subcontinent, Sumatra and Kalimantan to get their materials wholesale. He was conspicuous in Sumatra for his size and presence, but Mac needed to make a quick trip into the hills and Johnny Hukapa had precisely what he needed: highly secure jungle transport.
The bell dinged as Mac walked into Sunshine Tours, located in an old Dutch-built freestanding house set back from the road. The woman behind the counter was a thin, short, middled-aged local with a weathered face and a big genuine smile.
‘Hello, mister,’ she said.
Mac asked for John Hukapa and the woman said, ‘Okay, you come now,’ dragging him by the hand through a curtain of multicoloured plastic ribbons and into an offi ce. A large Maori man in military shorts and a black T-shirt stood up from an armchair and came towards Mac.
‘Macca! Long time, bro!’ said the man with a smile.
‘Johnny – how you going?’ said Mac, shaking the proffered hand.
Mac had met John Hukapa in Iraq in the late 1990s, when Hukapa had been doing clandestine patrols with the Aussie SAS around Iraq’s borders with Jordan. Mac’s assignments were concerned with the Jordan stevedoring
