Tuvalu, where they don't give a shit about any rules or regulations.'
'He knew too much about our movements to be somewhere offshore. He's around, watching, listening, waiting.'
'So he could know that you're here, talking to me?'
I said nothing but I looked at the door Ali had slammed behind him.
Chang closed his eyes. Without those keen eyes enlivening his face he looked older, more weary. 'He's a good man. He saved your life.'
'He shot a Chinaman. Where did he get him?'
'Head and heart.'
'Head to kill; heart to be sure. Would he shoot a Malouf or a Habib?'
'You're a pain in the arse, Hardy,' Chang said, 'undermining the integrity of a trusted officer.' He looked at his notes again. 'He cut you off when you started to talk about your plan with Sabatini. If he's… on the other side, why wouldn't he want to hear all about that?'
'Because he wouldn't want you to hear about it, and he would want to catch me on my own.'
Chang glanced around the room as if help could be found in the filing cabinets, the bookshelves, the citations on the walls. There's no help there as we both knew: it comes down to decisions, guesses, risks to be taken. I knew then, as I'd always known, that he was a good man who'd put the right thing to do up at the top of his agenda. But I had to give him a nudge.
'Stephen,' I said, 'I couldn't help noticing that you wrote your notes on our interview in Chinese characters. Do you always do that?'
'Sometimes,' he said. 'Just sometimes.'
Chang called Ali back and we discussed the plan to provoke Malouf/Habib through an article Sabatini would write and post as a blog. We also talked about the possibility of striking a deal with Malouf/Habib in exchange for his exposing the grand scheme.
'Cowboy stuff,' Ali said. 'We can't guarantee immunity or anything like that.'
'Why not?' I said. 'You've done it before.'
Chang nodded. 'True, but by Jesus the information better be good.'
I said, 'He'll want details and help-a passport probably, maybe money, maybe a hostage.'
'You seem to know a lot about his thinking,' Ali said.
'I'm just putting it together how I'd want it if it was my way out. If what he can reveal is as big as he says, he'll have to run a long, long way.'
Chang smiled. 'And not to Hong Kong or the Emirates. Where would you guess, Karim?'
I studied Ali closely. Was he thinking about how to deliver this information to Malouf/Habib, or were our suspicions all wrong? Impossible to tell; his handsome face was set in its customary sceptical expression when I was in the picture. He shrugged. 'South America.'
'Right,' I said. 'Brazil. The new Ronnie Biggs. The difficult part is to get a hint in Sabatini's piece that the police are considering a deal. Just a hint.'
'This is bullshit,' Ali said. 'I vote we round up Houli and Talat and tell them what we know and get them to tell us what this is all about. Do a deal with them if we must and fuck Malouf… or whatever his name is.'
Chang looked at me. 'Hardy?'
'It's not a bad idea, but my guess is after what happened to the Wong boys, Houli and Talat will be very hard to find.'
Ali pulled out his mobile phone, wandered off to the other side of the room and made some calls. His responses were negative grunts.
Closing the phone, he said, 'I hate to admit it, but you're right-they're lying very low.'
Chang looked down at the characters on his notepad. 'Well, this looks like the only game in town, but I'm warning you, Hardy, you contact us the second you hear from Malouf. I'm calling him that until I learn otherwise. Try playing some independent smartarse game and you'll have your next heart bypass in gaol.'
Ali liked that; it was the first time I'd seen him smile.
26
What we were proposing wasn't really all that unusual or outrageous. There were journalists virtually embedded with the various police forces and intelligence agencies, and others who were leaked to systematically and operationally. There was a recent case where someone on the police or the intelligence strength had leaked to a paper about a planned raid on terrorist suspects. The paper did a deal with the operations leader not to publish until the raid was underway. Somehow the story got into print early, and the raid had to be moved forward. Things in that kind of world can go seriously wrong.
The only substantial contribution to Sabatini's blog I made was the headline:
IS RICHARD MALOUF STILL ALIVE?
Readers will remember the case of the financial wizard Richard Malouf who managed to spirit away millions ofdollars from his clients' accounts, lose it gambling with figures in the Sydney underworld, and, apparently, die from a gunshot wound in his car. Suicide or murder? The coronial inquiry has yet to sit.
But it may be none of these things. Try faked death. A source close to a certain police task force investigating crime in the Chinese and Lebanese communities has told this writer that Malouf may still be alive. No details are available, other than that there have been as yet unverified 'sightings'. More intriguing are hints that Malouf may not be the real name of the man in question. Questions to be answered: is he alive? If so, who was the dead man in the car and who killed him? And why does this writer get the feeling that in the minds of certain police there are bigger fish to fry than financial juggler, lothario and crack sportsman Richard 'Dicky' Malouf?
Sabatini sent me a draft of the article and I complimented him on it. I'd briefed him fully on my interview with Chang and Ali and I felt he'd struck the right notes.
'You realise,' he said, 'that if your suspicions about this Sergeant Ali are right, it won't matter. Malouf will know exactly how the land lies.'
'When and if he rings I'll try to trip him up on that.' 'What if he doesn't ring?'
'I think he will. People can only play a double game for so long. He might feel safer now that Freddy Wong's out of action but he might not. There could be someone worse in the wings. Same with Houli and Talat; he might think the stakes have gone up for them. A deal with the police, a version of witness protection, not that he'd be willing to bear witness, is his best chance.'
'If the cops play it straight. D'you think they will?'
'No. We have to be on our toes and it gets very complicated if Ali's dirty. Are you worried about getting your story?'
'No. I'm worried about Rosemary. She wants to come back.'
'Tell her not yet.'
'I have.'
'Insist.'
'How much luck have you had at insisting a woman do something she doesn't want to do?'
I told him to be careful, lock his door, stay in company and keep the instant backup number Chang had given me close to hand. It didn't seem likely that Houli would come after us, but it was possible. And Malouf/Habib himself might not make the quiet approach he'd spoken of. We still only had his word that he wasn't involved in the death of the substitute. And what of his school chum on a lonely beach in the far north?
I got a call-waiting signal and rang off, after promising Sabatini I'd contact him immediately if it was our man. It wasn't.
'Cliff,' Megan said, 'what the hell have you been up to?'
Is that what it comes to-your children addressing you the way your parents did?
'The usual,' I said.
'I saw the news and I recognised the house and the Falcon and that was you being bundled into the police car with the coat over your head. Did you shoot that man?'
