CHAPTER 29
Waking to the smell of bacon, eggs and coffee, Mac stretched and glanced at the Timor Sea through the window of his apartment. Breakfast usually finished at 9 am at Larrakeyah Army Base in Darwin, so he showered and shaved quickly, trying not to dwell on his battered face when he looked in the mirror.
Registering at the mess, Mac waited to be assigned a table as an athletic woman in civvies was leaving.
‘Macca,’ she said softly, as she came alongside.
‘Badders,’ said Mac, disappointed he’d missed the opportunity to have breakfast with Gillian Baddely, one of the few female officers in Australian military intelligence. ‘My timing sucks.’
‘As usual,’ said the cute brunette, giving him a look as she walked away.
Perusing the Australian while he ate toast and nursed a plunger of coffee, Mac pondered on how his life could have taken a different course. Gillian Baddely was the woman who’d told the Australian Army to go screw itself after it agreed to an Iraqi demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors should all be male. Gillian had dug her heels in and won the appointment, which had not made her many friends among the diggers.
Mac liked her and thought the whole feminist thing was quite funny. They’d got very drunk one night in Amman after her IAEA rotation, and the poor timing she referred to was his falling asleep before anything could be consummated.
Looking up from his paper, Mac saw the steward approaching.
‘Phone call for you, sir.’
Looking to see if any of the stragglers in the mess were taking too much interest, Mac wiped his mouth with the napkin and went to the wall-mounted phone beside the steward’s station.
‘Davis,’ he said.
‘Catnip, please confirm,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘Repeat, Catnip, please confirm.’
‘Catnip, this is Albion,’ said Mac, looking away from the other diners.
‘Albion – status,’ said the voice.
‘Status Masquerade,’ said Mac, referring to the name given to the operation to find Blackbird. If he was in danger or under duress, he would’ve given his status as ‘Limelight’.
A click followed and a powerful voice boomed down the line. ‘McQueen – Davidson,’ said Tony Davidson.
‘Hi, Tony,’ said Mac.
‘Can’t speak for long, mate – walking for a plane.’
‘Where are you?’ asked Mac.
‘En route – I’ll be there about midday, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Mac quietly.
‘Meet you at the office, right?’ said Davidson. ‘Bring everything you’ve got – and let’s keep this between us, okay, Macca? The section can wait.’
As he finished his breakfast, Mac thought about the call and Davidson’s rush to Darwin. It was probably an attempt to intercept Mac before he was recalled to Denpasar to debrief with Atkins and maybe Tobin.
There was an ongoing power play between Davidson and Carl Berquist, the ASIS director of analysis, over the key messages contained in the weekly ASIS reports that went to the Office of National Assessments before being synthesised into the intelligence advice the Prime Minister’s security committee received. Technically, Davidson controlled the field officers who collected raw intelligence, while Berquist controlled how the intelligence was interpreted. Both had the power to skew an argument, but Davidson only retained his edge with timing: controlling the reports from officers like Mac before they were written. Once a report got to Tobin in Jakarta and Davidson in Canberra, Berquist’s analysts could pull what they wanted from it and develop their own narratives.
Needing a wake-up for his battered body, Mac bought some swimming trunks and goggles from the base store and made for the swimming pool. Starting slow, he numbered off thirty laps of the twenty-five-metre outdoor pool, feeling his back and shoulders stretch out, letting his face relax and his lungs fill up.
Once he’d hit his rhythm, Mac thought about how he was going to play Davidson: straight down the line, probably. When Davidson said he liked clean product, he meant it. He thought an intelligence outfit should simply do its job as best it could, and he’d long hated the lie that there was no credible link between Indonesia’s army and the East Timorese militias.
Walking to the poolside seating, Mac grabbed a towel and dried off, wondering where Lee Wa Dae came into the equation and why Rahmid Ali had whacked him. Mac wanted to be sure of what he told Davidson. If he wavered, an office guy would be assigned to help him write the report – a scenario Mac had always avoided.
Throwing the towel around his neck, Mac noticed a blonde woman sitting with a group of officers.
And then Jessica Yarrow looked straight back at him and she was on her feet.
‘Oh my god!’ she shrieked and ran towards him, throwing her arms around Mac’s neck and giving him a kiss. ‘You’re alive!’
Shrugging, Mac looked over her shoulder and gave the confused army officers a smile.
‘Where have you been?!’ she demanded, grabbing him by the biceps. ‘We thought you were dead, Richard! Manny went back for you. Is he here?’ she asked, looking around.
‘No, but he found me,’ said Mac, smiling.
‘Jesus, Richard,’ she said, hand going up to Mac’s cheekbone. ‘What happened to your face? Who did this?’
‘Walked into a door,’ said Mac, breaking into a chuckle.
‘What’s so funny?’ asked Jessica. ‘Is something funny?’
‘No,’ said Mac, feeling an emotional release. ‘I’m just glad you made it.’
Mac and Jessica walked along the grass of Bicentennial Park, the enormous public area on the waterfront of Darwin, lined with red poincianas and rain trees. Mac told her about being caught by Kopassus, without going into details, and the story of Bongo bailing him out, leaving out the bodies in trunks, disinterment and death camps. When women said they wanted to hear everything, they never meant it.
‘After Manny rescued me, it wasn’t safe to leave through the commercial airport, so the UN flew me out – just like you,’ said Mac.
‘I’m still waiting for a new passport,’ said Jessica as they walked under the clear skies. ‘But army food isn’t too bad.’
Buying a couple of ice blocks from a vendor in the park, they wandered along the military displays that lined the foreshore, reading the plaques about which US warships had been sunk and how many Japanese planes made up the raiding party. Darwin had a fragrant, tropical ease to it, not unlike Honolulu. And like Honolulu, Darwin had a strong military and strategic significance.
They eventually strolled down to the semicircular lookout that surrounded a World War II naval gun. Gazing out over the Timor Sea they were silent for a few moments, before Jessica tucked herself into Mac’s arms.
‘I was so scared, Richard,’ she said, tears running down her cheeks. ‘After we found those kids, I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I’m still shaking.’
‘But what’s this about you and those kids?’
‘Did Manny tell you?’ said Jessica, embarrassed.
‘He said you’d made sure they were safe – what was that about?’
‘The militia was coming, they were shooting at the guerrillas and being driven back into us.’
‘Yeah, so?’ asked Mac.
‘So, I got the kids behind that tree and then I – well, you know, I had Manny’s gun.’
Her voice had lost all its former cockiness and Mac felt her fingers digging into his arms.
‘You did the right thing, Jessica.’
‘I killed two human beings, Richard,’ she sniffled. ‘Shit – they were just teenagers.’
‘Teenage rapists with assault rifles,’ said Mac, looking into her eyes. ‘Look, you got through, mate, and you looked after those kids – it balances, believe me.’
‘Don’t mention kids – please,’ she said, pushing away slightly.
‘What?’ said Mac.
