‘Thought Gleeson wanted me around?’ Mac pushed.
Down the line it was obvious that Davidson was excusing himself from his present company.
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Davidson, slightly breathless, a few seconds later. ‘But Gleeson gets a call from McRae at National Assessments – they were at Sydney Uni law school together, right? – and McRae is going off his trolley.’
‘About me?’ said Mac.
‘ Yes about you!’ snapped Davidson. ‘What’s this shit about Wiranto being a misunderstood genius -’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘- a constitutionalist?! Shit, Macca.’
‘I thought they wanted my HUMINT,’ said Mac, referring to human intelligence of the type gleaned from interaction with people.
‘Yes, Macca – and fucking ONA have been carefully building a picture for the Prime Minister of Wiranto as a man who wants to be president and will inflict any atrocity on Timor to support that. And you walk in there and make him out to be some confused teenager -’
‘Actually, I said he was probably responsible for the militias in Timor,’ said Mac, not wanting to argue with his biggest supporter. ‘But Wiranto believes in constitutional government: he could have taken over when Soeharto was toppled, or launched coups when the riots started in Jakarta or when Habibie announced the East Timor ballot – but he didn’t. My point was the economic crisis puts him under pressure from his own generals to hold East Timor, that’s all.’
The sound of Tony Davidson sighing hissed out of the phone. ‘I happen to agree with you. But that’s not where the firm or National Assessments or even the government is headed right now, okay? Gleeson wants you back in the field.’
‘Jakarta?’ said Mac.
‘The section’s got something for you,’ said Davidson, referring to the intelligence section at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.
‘Pay rise perhaps?’ said Mac, but the line was already dead.
The driver gave him a sealed envelope as they came into Jakarta in the white Holden Commodore. The note said: Lunch 1300. Usual place. CR .
CR was Cedar Rail – the internal code name of ASIS’s Jakarta station chief, Greg Tobin, and the usual place was the only place they’d ever met in Jakarta. Mac didn’t mind Tobin as much as some spooks did, but he was hoping that his boss didn’t want to play cloak-and-dagger. He was too tired for that shit.
Mac got out of the Commodore in the heart of Mega Kunigan – Jakarta’s version of The City in London – and walked two blocks north to the JW Marriott. Casing one side of the street, he suddenly crossed at a green signal and stared at the window displays on the other side, checking the reflections. Jakarta was a town of violent surprises – a sort of Australian version of what Vienna had been for British intelligence in the Cold War.
Satisfied there were no tails, he got to the Marriott early and sat in the enormous lobby for ten minutes, reading the Jakarta Post. Even when Greg Tobin sailed through the marble-lined area with Anton Garvey in tow, Mac remained seated for a few minutes, looking for signs of surveillance: eyes peering over newspapers, reception staff suddenly picking up a phone, people whispering into their shirt cuffs. Mainly, Mac waited to see if anyone came through the main doors thirty seconds after Tobin, looking too innocent. That was always the giveaway – no one entering the Marriott was entirely innocent.
Seeing nothing suspicious, Mac threw the Post on a coffee table and sauntered through to the buffet restaurant, with its open kitchen and talkative cooks. Greg Tobin stood with a smile and shook Mac’s hand.
‘G’day, Macca,’ he said, with all the toothy charm of a politician. ‘How are you, old man? Not too serious I hope?’ He pointed at Mac’s face as he sat, a masculine look of feminine concern.
‘No worries, Greg,’ said Mac. ‘Just a scorch.’
‘I missed you, darling,’ said Anton Garvey, tanned and bull-like. ‘You don’t phone, you don’t write.’
‘Garvs, you old tart!’ said Mac, shaking the big paw. Anton Garvey had been in the same graduate intake as Mac, back in the early nineties. They’d become close friends very quickly, not least because they’d both been boarders at famous St Joseph’s schools: Garvey at Joeys in Sydney and Mac at Nudgee in Brisbane.
The three of them small-talked, each of them playing their roles. Tobin, a year older than the other two, saw himself as the going-places leader-of-men. The former crown prince of the St Lucia campus at UQ acted as if he ruled the world and was merely waiting for his business card to reflect it. Garvey was the corporate man – not spectacular enough for a starring role, but a reliable team guy who didn’t like too much divergence from authorised behaviour. Mac seemed to have become the ruthless loner, a description he had loved as a younger man but which, at thirty, was starting to isolate him; the events in Canberra had made him feel as if he were cast as a paramilitary rather than a whiteboard warrior.
They got through lunch and Tobin ordered another round of Tigers before leaning into Mac’s intimacy zone. ‘Got something I need you to do, Macca,’ he intoned with a perfect combination of authority and charm. ‘Special assignment.’
‘One of those management courses in Canberra, eh Greg?’ joked Mac.
‘Well,’ said Tobin, clearing his throat and swapping looks with Garvey, ‘not quite, old man.’
Looking around the restaurant, Mac saw foreign business people trying to shake money out of the tree that was Indonesia. ‘So what’s the gig?’
Stroking his tie, Tobin reached for his beer. ‘We’d like to get a better idea of what the Indons might be up to.’
‘Up to?’
‘Yes, Macca – in Timor.’
Mac could feel Garvs shifting his weight, uncomfortable.
‘What about Atkins?’ said Mac, assuming that the firm’s man in Denpasar, Martin Atkins, was the Timor guy.
‘Marty’s a controller now, mate,’ said Tobin. ‘He’ll be running you, actually.’
‘So we don’t have someone in Dili?’ said Mac.
‘We did,’ said Tobin, gulping at his beer, avoiding Mac’s eyes.
‘And?’
‘And we need a good operator to replace him,’ said Tobin, now looking at Mac.
‘Replace him? What happened to our guy?’ said Mac, his gut turning icy.
‘Don’t know,’ rasped Tobin, ‘but we’d like to have a chat.’
CHAPTER 6
Garvey came back to the table with two Heinekens and switched the discussion to the rugby league action of the past weeks.
‘The problems started with those hits on Martin Lang,’ said Garvey before he found his seat. ‘Can’t run around with your head sticking up like that – did you watch it?’
‘Highlights on satellite,’ said Mac, his mind elsewhere.
Garvey scoffed. ‘Cowboys game was okay, but shit, Macca – losing to the Roosters?! That hurt.’
‘Why not get us an HR course in Oz for the grand final,’ said Mac, sipping at the beer, ‘if Tobin’s game?’
‘Might work – get you retrained on the expenses protocol, mate.’
‘Get you an equity officer,’ said Mac. ‘Rid you of these negative gender-based attitudes.’
‘I’ll write a memo, get it moving,’ said Garvey. ‘By the way – see fucking Hugh Jackman’s doing the grand final anthem this year? That bloke a poof?’
‘Nah,’ said Mac. ‘It’s just the teeth, and he can dance.’
Around them the patrons in the Bavaria Lagerhaus – mainly expats from the embassy precinct of south
