face in the dark could really have been anyone.
Abu Samir did not have the same profi le on the FBI and CIA computers as Hambali or Mohammad Noordin Top – both of them JI operatives who hid out in Malaysia while Suharto went on a turkey shoot of Jihadists in the late 1990s. But if you asked any military intel or special forces person about the tangos they wanted to put away, Samir outranked everyone except Abu Sabaya. Samir was similar to Sabaya in that he didn’t think like some Baader-Meinhof dickhead trying to outrage Daddy. He thought like a guerrilla general: how to cause the utmost pain and injury to the enemy. How to demoralise.
Mac emerged from the tepid water and walked up the beach, trying to breathe shallow to protect his aching chest, the white sand squeaking under his feet.
What looked like Sri Lankan newlyweds wandered towards him hand-in-hand. They said hi, and Mac smiled, nodded.
Outside his cottage Mac fi lled a white plastic pail with water from an outdoor tap and poured it through his hair and over his body.
There were only ten cottages on Seraya Beach, and because they had outdoor concrete lavs that had to be fl ushed manually, and you could only get fresh water when they turned on the pumps between six and nine pm, ninety-nine per cent of the Anglo world avoided them.
Which was fi ne with Mac.
He drank half a beer, and felt fatigue take over. Hitting the hay shortly after nine, he thought about the UN and then about Jenny Toohey, his casual-yet-serious girlfriend who worked with the Australian Federal Police in Jakarta. Manila felt far enough away from Jen and he wondered how far New York would feel. What did she really think about him going and would she try to join him? He fell asleep thinking about shooting that sailor on Penang Princess and mumbling a prayer that the face he had seen wasn’t Abu Samir’s.
CHAPTER 4
The door rattled, jolting Mac out of a deep sleep. Grabbing his pack, he threw himself off the bed, rolled across the bare teak fl oor, pulled the Heckler from the pack and aimed it. It was dark, no moon, and the breeze wafted through the windowless frames, fl apping the white curtains over Mac’s head as he steadied himself and got his breathing under control.
He sat naked on the fl oor like that for eight seconds, his heart pounding in his head. Then he heard it again; a rattling at the bamboo door. And then, ‘Mr Richard, please, sorry, sir. Mr Richard, please…’
It was Philip.
Mac took a deep breath and winced as his sternum fl ared, making lights appear at the edges of his vision.
‘What is it?’ said Mac, looking at his G-Shock: 3.12 am local.
‘I have phone for you, Mr Richard.’
Moving to the bamboo wall, Mac peered out the side window.
‘You alone, mate?’ Mac rasped.
‘Yes, I alone, Mr Richard. It the phone for you, sir.’
Mac leaned against the front wall of the cottage, looked around the corner and cased the beach. It was deserted. He pulled on a pair of undies and put one foot through the windowless space and then the other.
‘Be right with you, champ!’ he yelled, throwing himself to the sand twelve feet below. He doubled around the front of the raised cottage in cup-and-saucer mode, and up the side path to the back door. Holding his breath, he levelled the Heckler as he peeked around the corner, expecting to fi nd Philip with a gun to his head. But Philip was alone.
‘Nice this time of evening, eh?’ said Mac, having slipped his gun into the back of his undies.
Philip jumped out of his skin, yelped slightly, and Mac regretted surprising him. A few years older than Mac, Philip was a former high school teacher. He and his wife had taken over Seraya Beach from her father and uncles a few years earlier.
Mac and Philip chatted as they strolled back to the offi ce at the southern end of the beach.
‘I thought you were a ghost,’ laughed Philip.
‘Indonesian ghosts are white?’
‘Sure,’ said Philip. ‘But often they friendly,’ he added quickly, realising he may have caused offence.
The phone handpiece sat on the front desk of the offi ce area – really just a porch at the entry to Philip’s house. Philip pointed at it and Mac picked it up and said, ‘Davis.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ yelled the unmistakable voice of Joe Imbruglia, ASIS station chief in Manila, ‘where the fuck are you?’
‘Up early, Joe. You shit the bed?’
A hiss of breath came through the phone. Joe had been one of the fi rm’s best-ever operatives in Beijing, with a special talent for East Asian languages and a good feel for the weird political and cultural problems between Japan, Korea and China. But now he was a reluctant offi ce guy expected to run Mac, and while they respected one another they also clashed.
‘Don’t give me grief, McQueen. I need you in Denpasar, now!’
‘What, Garvey’s in the cells again? Just tell them to hose him down – he’ll come right.’
‘Don’t get smart, McQueen. We’ve got a multiple IED incident in Kuta, Garvey’s gone down there as a declared but we need a covert.
Understand?’
Mac massaged his temples with his left hand. ‘Well, if Garvey’s running it…’
‘Don’t argue with me, mate. I’ve got reports of hundreds dead – most of them Aussies. Those JI fuckers bombed a couple of nightclubs.
In Kuta! Eleven o’clock at night! You believe these people?’
Mac could hear the emotion coming up in Joe’s voice. ‘So, my role is what?’
‘The fucking Feds have a forward command post already on the move, okay? Your job is to keep an eye on things, make sure the story doesn’t get too out of shape.’
Mac nodded. Joe was worried about the Australian Federal Police taking control and doing naive things like telling the media precisely what was going on. Mac would need to tailor the story, stop any Boy Scout behaviour.
‘My cover?’
‘Embassy – your usual shit. If DFAT get to run the show, then you’ll have veto on the media releases. You’re public affairs, okay?’
‘Got it.’
Joe told him there was an Australian Navy Sea King helo on its way. ‘And McQueen?’
‘Yes, Joe?’
‘They’re on your side. None of that survivalist bullshit, okay?’
Mac walked slowly back to the cottage wondering what the real story might be in Kuta. His UN gig was in jeopardy – Mac could feel it. But there was a deeper worry in Joe’s voice, like the world had just changed forever.
The Sea King landed on Seraya Beach just before four am. Mac took the loadmaster’s arm-grip and jumped on with his pack. The helo rose, turned and headed west towards Bali. Mac cadged a pair of overalls to ward off the draught, strapped himself into the awkward hammock seat and tried to think through what this was all about.
The Australian Secret Intelligence Service was a spy agency but it was part of DFAT – the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
So it was part of the same set-up as the diplomats and the trade commissioners. When ASIS offi cers were posted to an embassy, they were either a ‘declared’ intelligence operative or they had a cover. The cover would normally be something like a second trade attache or a diplomatic mid-ranker with vaguely defi ned public affairs duties.
The way embassies worked – which really annoyed Australians who worked abroad for their country – was
