Pakistanis. It is in the history.’
Mac stood in the shower, thought about what Ari had said. It fi lled in some but not all of the holes. He dried off and got dressed while Ari copied the documents with his mini-scanner – a device the size of a highlighter. Mac had withheld the page with the blue ballpoint N W scrawl. Didn’t know why. Just a habit for secrets, perhaps.
Mac’s Service Nokia went off. Freddi Gardjito would be pulling up outside in fi fteen minutes. As Mac signed off, the clean Nokia trilled and he walked into the kitchenette area and answered.
‘Hi Joe,’ he said, then brought the other man up to speed: the soldier in the tree, the fact that Sumatra was shut down, the documents and the arson at the airfi eld. ‘Akbar’s dead,’ said Mac, ‘but Hassan and Samir are still on the run.’
‘So what’s next, mate?’
‘Joining BAIS in a few minutes. Something’s cooking.’
‘Be careful, McQueen, okay? It’s enough to observe and report.’
Mac made the usual noises, but they both knew what was expected of him. There were times when observation wasn’t enough and you needed to snatch a bloke, bring him in, get him talking. Or you needed to turn a person, get them working the other side of the road.
Joe knew all about that. He’d turned and run a very high-level offi cer in the Japanese nuclear program of the mid-1990s.
The Japanese had been building ICBMs and space-control/re-entry systems, and telling their neighbours they were developing their M-5 and J-1 rockets to launch satellites. At the same time their enrichment activities included a fast-breeder reactor that produced weapons-grade plutonium. When Japan signed an MOU in 1999 committing itself to the American exo-atmospheric Theatre Missile Defense system, the penny fi nally dropped in the East Asian neighbourhood and North Korea had every excuse it needed to develop its own nukes.
So Joe Imbruglia had ensured that Australia knew about Japan’s intentions before anyone else in Asia, and with that knowledge made sure that Australia was dealt into the Theatre Missile Defense system or TMD – and all the joint-development contracts with the Americans that went with it. Joe Imbruglia had become integral to Australian intelligence’s Nuke Desk and he was a star.
Joe was winding it up when something fl ashed into Mac’s mind, a piece of the puzzle that was trying to come to light, a thread that connected Joe to Kuta and to Hassan. The Japanese fast-breeder was notable in intelligence circles because the plutonium it produced was perfect for weapons miniaturisation. Essentially, a plutonium core the size of a tennis ball could be surrounded by a compact detonation system and the whole device could fi t inside a military backpack. It was also known as a mini-nuke.
Joe’s running of Mac started to make sense. He’d let Mac build a fantasy scenario about leaking word to the tango community that Akbar had turned traitor, but was Joe really running a nuclear counter-espionage operation?
Mac controlled his voice, and decided to give it a go. ‘Joe – why me?’
Joe sighed. ‘ McQueen! ‘
‘Come on, Joe.’
‘You’re taping this, aren’t you?’
‘This is the clean Nokia. And you called me.’
‘Look, mate, this is turning into a shit-fi ght – best you can do is help the Indonesians put these people away, okay?’ said Joe, sounding frazzled.
‘I need more,’ Mac insisted.
‘Like?’
‘Like, I haven’t been a part of the Nuke Desk since the INVO shit
– but I’m chasing Hassan.’
‘Jesus, mate. You honestly think Canberra would send their pipe-biters after Hassan and Samir?’
Mac laughed. The Nuke Desk was overloaded with highly educated theorists, a couple of whom liked to munch on non-loaded, unlit briar pipes while they held forth.
‘But why me? You guys have Jamieson in New Delhi and that bloke, what’s his name – Morrison – at the IAEA.’
‘I told you, I’m using my best guy for Indonesia.’
‘I need more, Joe. People are shooting at me.’
Mac heard Joe fi nding a new way to hold his chin.
‘Okay,’ conceded Joe. ‘Since late last year, the Americans have been raiding unsecured nuclear labs and enrichment facilities in the former Soviet Union, okay? The southern states, the central Asian republics.’
‘Who’s been doing it?’
‘Special forces under the Twentieth Support Command, US Army.
Know these guys? DIA operation, basically.’
Mac said, ‘Yep.’ The Twentieth was a global CBRNE strike force with its own Presidential fi nding, which meant it could do just about anything it wanted. Invading countries and stealing their unsecured plutonium cores sounded pretty much like the Twentieth at work.
‘Suddenly we have Hassan selling devices to terrorist organisations,’ said Joe, ‘and the Russians are saying the Americans supplied them to the Pakistanis. Now we have some of these players together in Indonesia and it’s time to move on them.’
Mac could hear Ari moving about in the next room but before he signed off he remembered something he wanted to ask Joe.
‘Mate, who was that other tango you were referring to on the phone yesterday? Might be useful.’
There was a pause. ‘Sure this is clean?’
‘Scouts,’ said Mac.
‘It’s not a person, McQueen.’
‘No?’
‘One version of events says Hassan landed in Indonesia with two devices.’
CHAPTER 19
They were halfway to Belawan – the port city of Medan – when Mac’s clean Nokia rang. ‘Yeah,’ he murmured, keeping his eyes on Purni and Freddi to see if they were listening.
It was Viktor, ready to talk.
Mac didn’t like sharing too much with other spooks but under the circumstances it didn’t look like he’d be adding to BAIS’s knowledge about Hassan and what his crew had detonated in Kuta. He tried the normal etiquette among spies and made a long umm, yeah sound.
Freddi leaned forward, turned on the radio – Indonesia’s answer to Britney Spears – and gave it some volume.
‘Vik, mini-nukes,’ whispered Mac, jimmying down as low as he could into the back seat of the LandCruiser and cupping his hand over his face. ‘Tell me about them.’
‘We are talking about Kuta, yes, Mac?’
‘Shit, Viktor!’
‘Well,’ said the Ukrainian, rolling the word into three syllables,
‘we watch the CNN and there is this hole in road.’
‘Mate, I was hoping you’d tell me it’s rubbish,’ said Mac, wanting an expert to quash the nuke thing quick- smart. He wanted a reason not to believe it.
‘Well, maybe and maybe no, yes?’
‘What are the engineers saying?’
‘They are looking at image and wondering what device make this.’
Mac felt squeezed. He was being shot at way too often and now he found himself seconded to Indonesian BAIS again, while being tailed by the Russians. The confi rmation that the Sari Club might be a nuke was too much.
