somehow had been able to fi nd out where Davidson lived, had moved to shut down Operation Mainstreet. The sellers, the spooks, the controller. Clean slate, no blowback.
Someone knew. Someone on the inside.
CHAPTER 51
A slight beep sounded and Mac woke with a start, immediately on alert. The Nokia’s screen projected an eerie orange light onto the ceiling, and Mac fought a pins-and-needled left arm to roll over and pick it up. The text message read, Dinner? Ted.
Looking at his G-Shock, Mac saw it was 6.09 pm. He texted back to say ‘yes’ to dinner and get the venue and time. Then he had a quick shower, dressed and sat at the writing table, fumbling the numbers into his phone. The non-identifying, non-committal answers came thick and fast until Mac was fi nally put through to Pru, Greg Tobin’s PA.
‘I need him for thirty seconds, Pru,’ pleaded Mac. ‘I mean – no games, okay?’
Greg Tobin – the head of operations for the entire Asia-Pacifi c region, and Tony Davidson’s successor – picked up less than thirty seconds later. ‘Macca! Nice surprise!’
‘Greg, he’s dead,’ managed Mac.
‘Who? What’s going on? Mate, are you okay?’
‘And Vi too.’
‘Vi? Shit, you mean, as in Tony and Vi? What -‘
‘Dead, shot – both of them. Professional hits.’
‘Where are you, mate? You at Noosa?’
Mac nodded, face in his hand.
‘Macca? You there? Are you in Noosa?’
‘Yes!’ he snapped.
‘We need to bring you in. Who else knows about this?’
‘Local cops,’ said Mac.
Mac heard Tobin speaking to someone in urgent tones before coming back on the line. ‘Six am at the airport, okay Macca?’
‘Okay.’
‘And Macca?’
‘Yep?’
‘Stay out of trouble.’
The last of the Queensland continental light was turning the Pacifi c purple as Mac took a refi ll of chardonnay from Ted’s wife, Ellie. Ted was lighting the citronella fl ares around the large sloping lawn and Ellie said her goodnights. Mac thanked her for a beautiful meal and sat beside Ted on a restored park bench overlooking Sunshine Beach.
‘Does Ellie know?’ asked Mac.
Ted shook his head, looked into his wine. ‘That can wait. I have to be careful, she may want to move on and, well -‘ He gestured at the view. ‘This is me, mate. They’ll bury me in Noosa.’
‘Nice up here, Ted. You did well.’
‘Lost nine kilos, lost ten years,’ he smiled. ‘So what about you, mate?’
‘I was out for a while, you know, when my daughter was born.
Been living down on the Gold Coast.’
‘Sure.’
‘But Tony was running this new economic team, and I came in to work with him. I was up in Jakkers for this new job. It was my fi rst time there in a long time and -‘ he raised his eyebrows.
Ted sighed, shook his head.
‘Thing was,’ said Mac, ‘the gig was working. The infi l was successful, we were getting the intelligence, it was nice and soft, and then wham.’
‘Is there anything we can talk about? I mean, are you supported?’ said Ted.
Mac laughed at the sky. ‘That obvious, eh Ted?’
‘Mate, it happens to any good operator at least once in his career.
It’s not you, okay?’ said Ted.
Mac weighed his options. He couldn’t rely on Canberra or the section in Jakarta, so instead he was trying to claw cooperation out of Mossad and BAIS. Davidson had trusted Ted, liked him, invited him to his anniversary. And the thing about old timers is that they always knew something that could change your thinking: the new machines and cameras were great, but you could never discount sheer experience.
‘Okay,’ Mac exhaled, ‘the two Aussie business people we were infi ltrating in Jakkers were doing a deal with an Indon power generation consortium, right?’
Ted nodded.
‘So Canberra wanted to know who was behind the deal and confi rm exactly what was involved before they wrote a loan guarantee for this big export of control systems to this consortium. A political safety check, really.’
‘And what were the Aussies really selling?’
‘Uranium-enrichment codes, for running the centrifuge cascades and the camera fl ashes and vacuum processes.’
‘Heart and soul of a nuclear weapons program, right?’
‘A South African would know,’ said Mac, smiling.
‘Don’t get cheeky, mate! So what happened?’ said Ted.
‘The two Aussie businessmen were executed on the Shangri-La tennis courts, and my partner on the op – who was playing tennis with them – was shot twice. She’s now recovering under guard at the British compound.’
‘Shit!’ said Ted, looking out to sea.
‘And for good measure they had a hit man posing as a room-service guy who came up to see me – and probably her. He missed me by twenty seconds. It was a fl uke. Dumb luck.’
‘And you think Tony – and Vi – were killed the same afternoon?’
‘Almost certain. Wipe the slate clean.’
Silence sat between them. Ted wanted to know and Mac was too embarrassed to say.
‘So, you’re down here -‘ Ted began.
‘My people ordered me out of Jakarta.’
‘Why?’
Looking at him in the glow of the fl ares, Mac thought very hard about what he was going to say next. It was against every instinct to tell anything to someone from another intelligence agency, even if they had retired. ‘Because they think I’m peddling conspiracy theories, told me I’ve been hanging around with the boys from BAIS and Mossad for too long.’
‘What’s the theory?’
‘Six years ago, two mini-nukes were stolen from the Israelis. One was -‘
‘Used in Kuta?’
Mac stared at Ted, shocked. ‘You know this?’
‘We jointly developed the mini-nuke with Israel. Did joint testing in the Indian Ocean in the late seventies.’
‘So?’
‘Well, I’m not sure -‘
‘Come on, Ted, I’ve spilled.’
‘It’s complex.’
‘I need to know, Ted,’ Mac insisted. ‘I think that second nuke is on its way to Australia.’
