At 11.43, Mr Economist left without looking at anyone. He’d been made and was hitting the hay.
Mac had forgotten how funny Diane could be when she drank.
She kept trying to order more Bundys and he made the mistake of asking her if she was trying to get him drunk.
‘I’m trying to loosen you up, Richard,’ she said, prodding him in the chest. ‘Emotionally, you’re like a fucking oyster.’
Clyde kept the drinks fresh and Mac and Diane agreed to take turns having their whinge about events of the past, and then never mention it again. Diane wanted him to start, but Mac said, ‘Ladies fi rst.’ She rolled her eyes so Mac suggested they fl ip a coin to which she said, so the whole poolside area could hear her, ‘You are such a child!’
‘Keep it down,’ mumbled Mac into her ear, and Diane whispered that this was perfect husband-and-wife cover – a drunken dis-agreement about something petty.
‘Rock, paper, scissors?’ asked Mac.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Diane and grabbed a coin from Clyde.
She lost the toss and went fi rst, reminding him of a night in Jakarta when they’d got drunk at the old harbour, and they’d slept in Diane’s cottage in the British residential compound.
‘You remember?’ she asked. Mac nodded, looking into his beer and hoping she wasn’t playing him.
‘You said you had been going to ask me to marry you, when we were at that restaurant in Sydney, a few days before,’ she said.
‘Yep,’ said Mac. ‘I remember.’
‘And I said, “ Really? ”, and you said, “ Yes “?’
Mac nodded, a little unsettled by the memory.
‘Do you realise, Richard, that I lay there in the dark, waiting for you to ask me? I thought that was the point of the fucking conversation,’ she said in a low, hissing tone of anger and hurt that only women can do.
Mac stared into his Tiger, thinking, and when he turned to face her she was looking into his eyes.
‘Look, Diane, I was scared. You were very new, very different.’
‘It could have changed our lives, if you’d asked me,’ she whispered.
‘What?’ he laughed. ‘You’d have said yes?’
The hardness came back into her face. ‘You’ll never know that, will you, Richard?’
CHAPTER 31
Mac sat against the far wall of the breakfast restaurant. He’d been taught in craft school always to arrive early when courting an asset, and to sit where there is the greatest vision available to you and the least to the other bastard. Wincing through his headache, he asked for a cooked breakfast and a pot of coffee.
Mac counted three black goldfi sh bowls in the ceiling and he had a quick look at the Asian Wall Street Journal, taking the opportunity to scan for eyes, see if a bit of counter-surveillance was called for. Around him were tables of networking, jabbering business types who were in town for the conference but were really hoping to be introduced to the type of person who could make them a lot of money. Waiters and fl oor staff wafted about and by the time the waitress came back with the coffee Mac had found no reappearance of the surveillance team from the previous evening, and no encore from Mr Economist.
Alex Grant came in with Michael Vitogiannis at 7.04, greeted Mac and they all headed for the bain- maries.
Back at the table, Mac poured coffee all around and let Grant drive the discussion to where he wanted it to go. One of the reasons Mac was a relative natural at what he did was that he was a good listener.
People who talked more than they listened made terrible spies, and there were a lot of them.
‘So, I brought Michael up to speed on our discussion,’ said Grant, wearing offi cial leisure clothes that looked new. ‘You know, from last night?’
Mac nodded, and Grant cleared his throat. ‘And I suppose we’ve agreed that we’d like to have a chat about your services, Mr Davis, with a view to… umm… bearing in mind…’
‘We have to move quickly,’ said Vitogiannis, leaping in with certainty but not arrogance. ‘These deals are like vapour – you think it’s all go, and then poof -‘ he opened his hands as he widened his eyes,
‘it’s gone. Up here the game moves fast.’
Taking a long draught on the coffee, Mac thought about what he was going to say. He wanted to keep the discussion away from the sensitivity of the uranium-enrichment code, or even the secret provisions of the deal with NIME. The way to steer around that issue was to make the entire discussion about Mac and the money. If he could do that then Bennelong Systems might do all the hard work for him.
‘So, you’ve checked me out?’ asked Mac, friendly, nothing to hide.
‘Well, actually, Richard, that’s why we were late down here – making some calls,’ said Vitogiannis.
‘Gotta do it, guys – mad if you don’t,’ said Mac.
Vitogiannis shrugged at Grant as if to say I told you, and looked back at Mac. ‘Your accounts person was helpful about how we might initiate an agreement. It sounds like a solid set-up.’
Mac gave Terri – the accountant at the Southern Scholastic offi ce in Sydney – an inward high-fi ve. Depending on which line was used into the switchboard, it would trigger a computer screen with all the details of that operative and his commercial cover. The Davis Associates cover had been set up only recently and Terri had brought herself up to speed nice and fast, probably set Vitogiannis back on his heels with a few basic credit inquiries of her own. To most business people, a grumpy fi nancial controller was the mark of a good operation.
‘Well, Michael,’ said Mac, laughing, ‘may I start by revealing how comfortable I am with a man who starts at the most important point
– and that is how I’m going to get paid!’
Vitogiannis hooted and slapped his leg while Grant smiled, probably amazed that someone could be so forthright. It was an old spy technique: be disarmingly honest about something people were furtive about – like The Money – and people would tend towards trusting you. The Bennelong guys had the Australian Commonwealth chewing on one ear and a bunch of Indonesian businessmen on the other. They needed someone to trust.
‘So, how do we play this?’ asked Grant.
‘We decide whether I’m on retainer and expenses, or if you prefer to pay me on capital raised,’ said Mac. ‘The capital-raising rate is one and a half per cent of the agreed value of the deal, with overages of travel outside of Sydney or Canberra. Straight charge-back on hotels, cars and fl ights – no per diems. Sound fair?’
‘I like the second option,’ said Vitogiannis, looking at Grant, who was nodding back. ‘One and a half per cent is fair.’
‘And the transaction? What are we talking about here?’ asked Mac, keeping it light yet professional. ‘I mean, so I can work out if it’s worth it for me.’
‘The initial phase is a thirty-million-dollar supply contract – that’s what we wanted EFIC for,’ said Vitogiannis, measuring every word.
‘Okay,’ said Mac, pulling a bunch of papers from his document satchel, ‘let’s do the MOU and we’ll get started.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Vitogiannis, raising his hand. ‘This is going a bit fast, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t even know what’s required.’
Mac looked at him. ‘Michael, I made some calls this morning too, and I think I’ve found your problem, and maybe also a way through.’
Vitogiannis leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. His body language said, This bloke is a hard case. He looked at Grant. ‘You hear that, Alex? Mr Davis thinks he’s found a way through.’
‘I heard,’ said Grant, glancing at his watch. ‘Let’s get to work. We have a lunch meeting with our partners and I need some good news.’
They worked out of Grant’s Horizon Club suite on the twenty-second fl oor, looking north over Jakarta and out to the Java Sea. It had its own fax machine and executive desk, so Mac sent the engagement MOU on the machine
