Looking away and seeming confused, Yarrow looked back. ‘You got me, didn’t you?’
‘Well, I -’ started Mac.
‘You came for me,’ whispered Bill Yarrow, and then he was crying; big heaving child-like sobs, his bottom lip quivering and tears bouncing off it.
‘Look, it was more the army boys…’
‘I thought I was in hell,’ he whimpered, dabbing his eyes with his cotton blanket. ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.’
‘Look,’ said Mac, not expecting this. He’d spent so much time thinking about this chap as The Canadian, as the criminal, the informer and the procurer of bio-weapons feedstock, that to suddenly accept him as fully human was difficult. ‘I was just doing my job.’
‘No,’ said Yarrow, shaking his head. ‘You didn’t need to come for me – I’m a pariah who procures supplies to make the weapons of evil. I’m a leper.’
‘Look…’ said Mac, unable to go on with it. Yarrow was telling the truth: he was all those things, plus a customs-and-excise cheat who had cost the Australian taxpayer millions of dollars, quite aside from making the Ethno-Bomb possible. Mac had fought ASIS and DFAT and the Commonwealth for the right to retrieve this man, he’d gone into a Kopassus base to do it, and he’d done it for reasons that he hadn’t properly articulated. The value of a bio-weapons procurement expert to Western intelligence was how Mac had sold it to Davidson. But those weren’t Mac’s personal motivations.
‘You have to tell me, Mr Davis – why did you come for me?’ asked Yarrow.
‘Yes, Mr Davis,’ came a voice behind him. ‘Why come back for my dad?’
Turning, Mac took her in. Still cheeky and beautiful, Jessica was looking better in a white T-shirt and jeans than most women looked in a five-thousand-dollar ballgown.
Hugging Mac and giving him a kiss, she dragged him closer to Bill Yarrow. ‘Why do it?’ she asked with a big smile. ‘Why risk your life for an embarrassment?’
‘Maybe I had to square it up with Bongo?’ said Mac, not entirely sure of his reasoning.
‘Bongo?’ smiled Jessica fondly.
‘He woke me up to myself,’ said Mac. ‘Reminded me of a few things.’
‘What?’ asked Jessica, moving to him and holding her father’s hand.
‘Remember what Bongo said in the jungle?’ asked Mac.
‘Which one?’ she asked.
‘When I didn’t want to help the women, and he did?’
‘I remember,’ she said, putting her arms around his neck, the tears welling again. ‘You’re a wonderful man, you know that?’
‘What did this Bongo say?’ asked Yarrow, confused.
‘Either we all matter,’ said Jessica.
‘Or none of us do,’ said Mac.
