‘And over the past few days, McQueen, I’ve been seeing this whole chip on the shoulder thing about – what do you call it? – offi ce guys.’
‘Nine-eleven Commission said it too, Marty.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Atkins, sarcastic.
‘What, you didn’t read it, Marty?’
Atkins just stared at him, so Mac turned to Watson, asked her too.
‘Shit,’ said Mac, shaking his head. ‘I thought I was the cowboy.’
Atkins and Watson looked at each other.
‘Well,’ said Mac, ‘for those who can’t be bothered reading one of the seminal commentaries on their own profession, allow me to paraphrase: the fi eld guys from the Agency and Bureau called it in, and the offi ce guys went to lunch.’
Atkins threw his pen on the desk. ‘Screw you, McQueen.’
‘What it said.’
‘Well let me tell you it from the offi ce guy’s perspective, okay McQueen? Field operators to us mean sloppy reports, shonky expense claims, secret stashes of money, unauthorised identities and fake passports that they get from God knows where.’
Mac shrugged. Guilty, Your Honour.
‘Oh, and the weird conspiracy theories that they dredge up from their own paranoia. And through all this it’s my job to ensure they remain safe. Not just you, McQueen, but all of you.’ Atkins was shouting now, red in the face.
Watson moved her weight around in her chair, uncomfortable with the exchanges.
‘Then, when you guys have undermined the system as far as you can take it, you turn around and want the system to work for you,’ said Atkins.
‘Okay,’ nodded Mac.
‘No – not okay, McQueen. Yesterday we had what I thought was an adult chat. When you left I trusted you to get out to Hatta and get on that frigging eight o’clock to Perth. You said yes and you lied to me.’
‘So what about this mini-nuke?’
‘We’ll handle it from here, McQueen.’
‘ No way! ‘
‘No way? Shit, mate, you only came back on board four days ago, as a fi nance guy. You’re being run out of Australia, by Davidson, remember that?’
Mac nodded. Davidson’s whereabouts had become a riddle in itself: was there actually a problem with his controller being off the air for two days? Or was Mac being overly sensitive about the way his voicemail had locked out?
‘Anyone heard from Davidson?’ asked Mac, looking for a reaction.
‘Anyone?’ asked Atkins. ‘Should we go and ask everyone in the section?’
‘Okay, have you heard from him?’
‘When, McQueen? I mean, come on! Yesterday? Last week?’
‘I can’t get him on his mobile, voicemail’s locking out.’
Atkins looked genuinely confused and frustrated with the diversion. ‘Okay, okay, I’ll try to raise him, see what’s going on. But back to this other matter – I’m only talking to you because of your track record, but get this straight, McQueen: you’re economic and fi nance. The CT stuff has moved on, okay?’
‘So who will handle it, Marty?’
‘Feds, maybe. It’s a police matter, counter-terrorism, right?’
‘Who’ll brief the Feds if I’m on a plane?’
Something moved in Atkins’ eyes, and when Mac clicked he couldn’t help a nasty laugh. Garvs had once been a good friend but he wasn’t a person you’d put up against Hassan. He wouldn’t trust Garvs to make the cops focus down on the various trails.
‘Shit, Marty, not him,’ said Mac.
Atkins steeled himself. ‘Bray will put you on the fl ight, but I expect you to debrief and do handover with Garvs before you leave.’
Mac got up, trying to suppress his fury.
‘And McQueen? No funny stuff – full handover brief, right?’
‘You okay, Macca?’ asked Barry ‘Boo’ Bray as they headed for Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Mac had showered, washed a load of product through his dark hair and changed his dressing at the hotel before scarpering.
‘Um, yeah, thanks,’ said Mac, distracted and feeling a jumble of emotions. The handover with Garvs had been a disaster. It was a fob-off, a pro forma debrief in which Garvs showed very little interest in what Mac was saying. It was true that Mac was no longer in the inner sanctum of the fi rm’s ct work out of Jakarta, but whatever they were really up to, he was too exhausted to fi ght anymore.
‘You, know,’ said Boo, his small blue eyes beaming out of a big ruddy face that featured blond mutton-chops. ‘I used to run into the shit all the time in the navy.’ He chuckled. ‘All shades of it.’
‘Yeah?’ asked Mac. ‘Thought you were military police?’
‘I was, mate!’ he laughed. Boo Bray was a big, stroppy former navy MP who now ran what was known as the I-Team, a fl ying squad of cops from the Australian Protective Service who removed badly behaving Australians from embassies, army bases and trade missions all over the world. ‘But, shit, Macca – there was always a captain’s favourite, an admiral’s nephew, a politician’s son. Mate, you know how it is.’
Sniggering, Mac looked out on the Java Sea as they fl ashed up the freeway. It was late afternoon and he was being escorted to the 8.15 pm SIA fl ight to Singers and then Brissie. ‘Yeah, Boo – I know how it is.’
He got a three-pack of wine for Jenny and a Singapore souvenir T-shirt for Rachel. Then he got a bigger T- shirt too, for Sarah. They gave him his requested seat – 11A – on the Boeing 777 and the fl ight took off out of Changi at the scheduled time of 11.45 pm. He ate the meal and drank two glasses of red, and when he ducked into the lav he transferred his numbers from ‘phone’ to ‘SIM’, pocketed the SIM and chucked his Nokia in the bin. The hosties made up the airbed and he kicked his shoes and pants off and curled up under the sheet and blanket.
He’d made a call to Diane on his way from Halim Air Base to the embassy and they’d talked for twenty minutes. She was getting better although her father was a wreck, blamed himself and the diplomatic upbringing for getting her into the life. And because of the environment, he didn’t want Diane’s mother or Sarah in Jakarta.
Mac wondered if he’d played it right with Diane. He’d thanked her for her mum’s phone number in Sydney and then asked if he was allowed to be called Dad. Diane had hesitated, and Mac thought he’d blown it. Then he realised she was crying.
‘Yes, of course that’s okay,’ she sniffed. ‘She’ll need that – I need that.’
The lights were down in the cabin and as Mac dozed he thought intermittently about Freddi and Purni, Atkins and Garvs, and people like Danny Fitzgibbon, the MI6 stooge. He wondered why he couldn’t just take the easy way, as Garvs had.
The problem between the fi eld and the offi ce was one of focus: if you existed in an offi ce environment, your daily rationale became the accumulation of brownie points. It was a normal human response and good, smart people got sucked into it every bit as much as the born toadies. But when you worked in the fi eld, success had nothing to do with simply creating impressions. You got it wrong in the fi eld, you could die. You got it wrong in an offi ce, you had emails and memos to prove it was someone else’s fault.
Mac didn’t see himself as a bull in a china shop but he was stubborn and that formed part of his stamina. Blokes like Mac, Davidson, Freddi and Ari had the heart to keep on going through all the pain, tears and disappointments. It was stubbornness – and Hassan Ali and his crew were about to feel what genuine Queensland stubbornness was all about. Yes, he’d called Diane, but he hadn’t called ahead to Jen – because when he landed in Brissie, he wasn’t going home.
Not yet.
CHAPTER 49
