code was now gone – probably burned on CD – and it would become an international tracking exercise to see where it ended up. It was one thing to have the centrifuges for uranium enrichment, but it was the computer systems that ran the ‘cascades’ of centrifuges. The cascades in Libya and Iran had ten thousand centrifuges operating in union and you needed serious systems to make them work properly. The Pakistanis had just bought such a system, from Australia. It made Mac sick.
There was too much in the iDisk for Mac to investigate on his own but he knew who would make sense of it, so he plugged in a USB hard drive and downloaded all of the relevant folders straight into it.
After closing the iDisk Utility, Mac entered the ASIS intranet to send a secure email to Davidson. He was fairly confi dent of its security
– Australia had led the world into government PKI, or public key infrastructure, which essentially created concentric bands of access to departmental information via websites. The ASIS one required two layers of ID, the fi rst of which was as long as a credit card number.
He made the message short: told Davidson that the company behind NIME was Malaysia-based Ocean Technologies Company, and the principal was Syed Ali Naveed, who appeared to be operating from two A.Q. Khan front companies in Dubai: Desert Enterprises and Gulf Precision Metals. He noted that the concerns shown in Canberra about what was happening to Bennelong Systems’ Type-3 enrichment algorithms was probably correct because it was highly likely their sale had been fi nalised earlier that afternoon at the Shangri-La Hotel. Mac concluded with a note about how to get into the Grant iDisk and sent it, then got on the phone to get more info on Naveed from Davidson.
The call rang out and Mac left a voicemail message telling Davidson to check his email. Trying another number, Mac got through to an ASIS landline in Perth that was answered, ‘Good afternoon, Albany Trading Asia – how may I help you?’ and asked for Davidson by his cover name. Davidson wasn’t in his corporate offi ce, so Mac left a voicemail message there too.
Stowing his laptop in his backpack, Mac left the room. With Davidson not responding, he was getting into the paranoia zone and he wanted to fi nd Freddi Gardjito and run the Naveed name by him.
Mac would bet Sydney to a six-pack that the name Hassan Ali was on Naveed’s list of known associates.
He made for the elevator bank but changed his mind at the last minute, and went for the fi re stairs. As he bounded down two at a time, he wasn’t thinking about Alex Grant or Michael Vitogiannis or NIME. He was thinking about old scores and new information, a boy stolen, a girl shot and left for dead. He was thinking about Sumatra
‘02, about Hassan Ali and Gorilla, and how Naveed was going to lead him to them.
CHAPTER 34
The lobby was quiet as Mac came around from the side and cased it for eyes, his instincts on full alert. The Naveed-Khan connections had spooked him. What had started as Mac’s return to the game in an economic team was spiralling upwards.
Fronting the desk, Mac asked for Freddi. The girl said she’d never heard of the bloke, so Mac started talking loudly about the intelligence guy from BAIS. Freddi still didn’t appear, so Mac assumed he was in one of the plenary sessions, checking out who was fl irting on the edges of Indonesia’s burgeoning public infrastructure scene.
‘Look,’ said Mac. ‘Can you tell him that Richard Davis, from room nine-oh-two, needs to talk to him urgently, but I’ve had to duck out for a couple of hours?’ he said, handing over his card.
The girl typed a message into the system, then looked up, perplexed. ‘The room service you order just going up, Mr Richard.’
‘Must be a different guy,’ said Mac, preoccupied.
The girl looked at the screen, then called something over her shoulder. The male desk guy moved beside her and looked at the screen. ‘Yes, Mr Davis,’ he said. ‘I just saw the room service porter and I ask him and he say he going to room nine-oh-two – Davis.’
Mac’s neck crawled with fear. Something was wrong. He turned from the desk without another word and rushed across the enormous marble lobby, aiming for a side door and shooting out to where the lagoons and palms formed a sort of oasis.
Sprinting around the pools, he searched for the tennis courts, praying that Diane was safe. As he raced past the picnic tables on the far side of the lagoon pool, he heard two shots, then screams and then several more shots, one after the other. He sped across the lawns, through the palm trees and then took some steps three at a time to the tennis court complex.
The screams got louder and he saw a hotel employee coming out of her offi ce in the tennis pagoda, her hands up to her face. Mac sprinted past a middle-aged Anglo couple in tennis whites who were clinging together, shouting, ‘Get down, both of you!’
The screaming hotel employee was standing over the face-down form of Alex Grant, blood pooling around his face. A pitcher of water, some glasses and a silver tray were scattered around him, his white legs a pathetic tangle.
‘Get in the offi ce, call security,’ said Mac to the hysterical woman.
‘And hurry!’
Removing his backpack, Mac carefully surveyed the scene. He hadn’t seen anyone leaving the area and they could still be around.
He assumed there’d been at least two shooters by the sounds and their frequency. It was very hard to put so many single shots together so quickly when you had to aim and move about at the same time.
He moved past the clubhouse cottage and looked around the corner, head out, head in. At the end of the fi rst tennis court – where Grant, Vitogiannis and probably Diane had been playing – he could see a collapsed male body.
‘Fuck!’ he hissed to himself as he realised it was Vitogiannis. Mac wasn’t armed and it looked like he was dealing with at least two hit men.
Stealthing onto the tennis court, Mac’s heart lurched as he saw Diane lying on her side, her white shorts bloody. Taking another look around for shooters, Mac ran across the court, ducking down on the other side as he got to Diane. She was slumped on her right hip and Mac gently pulled her over to face him. She was alive, saliva running out of her mouth.
‘Diane, Diane!’ he breathed, sitting down so he could get his knees under her and hold her up straight. ‘Shit! Fuck!’ he muttered as he scanned for threats, then checked her wrist for a pulse. There was a weak one. She groaned, her head lolling. A dark stain soaked her tank top.
‘It’s going to be okay, Diane. I’m here. We’re going to get you to hospital, you’re strong, you’re going to make it.’
He pulled up her tank top and saw a hole in her stomach oozing blood at a rate that would see her dead within fi fteen minutes. There was another gory mess in her right shoulder. Her eyes rolled back and her hands gripped him momentarily, then she went limp.
‘Where’s that fucking ambulance? Ambulan! Mari! ‘ he screamed.
Scanning refl exively for the shooters, Mac saw Diane’s chromed Colt Defender on the court surface behind her. Palming it, he checked the spout and the mag and shoved it into his belt at the small of his back. Standing, he pulled Diane up into a fi reman’s lift and started across the tennis court for the hotel. Employees were running across the grassed area around the lagoon pools and the girl from the tennis clubhouse watched mutely as he jogged past the middle-aged couple.
‘Can we do anything?’ asked the bloke in a reedy American accent.
‘Pray,’ mumbled Mac.
During his time in the British military they had to do their two-up drills at least once a week. Most of the guys hated them, never saw the point. Now he was tabbing two-up and wondering if there were enough minutes left to let Diane survive. Wasn’t supposed to be how it worked.
He raced to the side entrance of the hotel as the conference goers moved tentatively out into the sun, eyes agog as he ran at them.
