Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent (21 page)
Mac walked the blocks to the Aussie compound. He had a mild sense of being followed but it felt like light surveillance. Felt like Garvey doing something for Mac’s own safety.
A knock sounded at the door at 2.15 am. Mac was showered, shaved and had only a mid-sized hangover. It was Garvey’s lackey, a bloke called Matt. They piled into a red Commodore, hit the airport freeway.
Matt was about thirty, tall, Anglo, educated. He was confi dent without being full of himself - a good lad to put on Mac’s case. Mac wondered if he had someone on the plane with him, or another tail waiting at Singers. Wondered if Garvs was just testing Matt, to see if he had the ticker.
They parked in the consular annexe of Soekarno-Hatta, went through the consular security clearance and into the consular ticketing for Qantas. The girl behind the counter was a pretty local and Mac hammed it up with a back injury, trying to get an upgrade to Singers.
The federal government had an eight-hour policy for travelling business class: you fl ew under that and you fl ew in the back, unless you were SES. Jakarta-Singers was way under eight hours.
The girl didn’t smile, didn’t react. But she gave him the upgrade.
‘Wish they did that for me,’ said Matt.
They walked into the main concourse. It was 3.20 am but the place was packed. Lines for the Qantas fl ights stretched out of view.
Kids moaned, dragged on their mums’ arms. Other kids snored on top of bags on the trolleys. They passed a group of Aussies with a state hockey team emblem across their cabin luggage. Mac slipped the wink to one of the blokes. ”Zit going, champ?’
Mac walked towards the huge security clearance section that transitioned passengers from the public concourse into immigration and the airline lounges. It stretched the width of the building and looked like a tollgate for humans. POLRI stalked back and forth with the low-hanging peaks on their caps. German shepherds, beagles, metal detector wands. Colt M4 carbines hanging across their chests.
Mac made a note of the M4. The Indon government’s anti-terrorism unit, Delta 88, had been equipped by the US government with fl ash new toys such as the M4 assault rifl e and Mac was glad to see they were actually being deployed rather than sold on by a general with a Ferrari habit.
Mac turned to Matt, shook his hand. ‘Thanks, champ. Let you get back to sleep now, huh?’
Matt smiled. They both knew Matt was going straight back to a listening post where he’d give regular updates to Garvs.
Mac had replaced his wheelie bag with a small black Puma backpack that had been lying in his room. Inside was the Service Nokia and the toilet bag, minus the Heckler. That was in the mail with his ovies and Hi-Tecs, posted from the Australian diplomatic compound by the night manager, Conzo. Conzo was an Indon who Mac had helped out a few times with money after his betting sprees at the Pulo Mas track in North Jakarta had gone awry.
So when Mac gave Conzo a package at midnight and asked him to mail it to Mac’s PO box in Jakarta, Conzo was straight on it. He parcelled it and addressed it, put a franking stamp on it and put it in the mail bag, all the while telling Mac about his latest losing streak at Pulo Mas.
The 38s were too big so Mac asked the shop girl to bring him the bone-coloured chinos in the 36. The girl swung the pants over the change room door. The 36s fi tted. He left them on, along with his new navy blue polo shirt, before heading into the Ralph Lauren shop barefoot. Sitting on a fi tting seat he asked the girl to bring over a pair of dark brown boat shoes - size 10. Asked for a couple of pairs of socks and got a brown leather belt.
It all fi tted, it was all good. Mac asked the girl if she could also hook a pair of dark blue 38 chinos and an XL white cotton Oxford shirt from the racks.
She was quick. He put his backpack in front of him on the counter to shield the transaction, put his blue chinos and white shirt in the pack. His old clothes went into a shop bag. He sauntered out into the giant mall that Soekarno-Hatta had become and walked straight up to his tail, an Aussie Vietnamese girl in a red Nike T-shirt, blue jeans and runners who was pretending to read the
Economist
.
Mac sat down beside her. She was mid-twenties, just learning her stuff. ‘Don’t tell me - too smart for the federal cops, too good-looking for the diplomats, huh?’ he said.
She looked up from the magazine, said, ‘I’m sorry?’
‘The spying thing? Thought about the cops, thought about foreign service, but settled on this. Can make a real difference, right?’
The girl feigned confusion. She was good at it. ‘Umm, sorry -
think you got the wrong person.’
She had a nice voice. Low register, good long vowels. Smart but sensitive.
‘Your mum doesn’t get it, right? You can’t tell her what you do, but you can’t get engaged to that lawyer she’s lined you up with. Holy shit! Not the lawyer.’
Mac was going for the mum connection. When he’d fi rst seen her he’d noticed a slight pronation of the left ankle. In gait psychogenics the Israelis would say she had an ongoing dispute with her mother.
Mac guessed it was to do with having some bullshit corporate cover yet a total lack of interest in suits.
The girl turned to him slightly, said, ‘Like I told you, mister, you got the wrong person.’
Mac was almost there. ‘By the way, the worst thing you can do in this business if you’re a girl? Sleep with a colleague. Doesn’t matter how profound it was, the blokes will call you a slut.’
Mac let it hang. He waited. Waited. The girl looked into the distance, she turned back. ‘Like I said …’
She trailed off. Looked away.
Mac shook his head. ‘Even if he said he loved you.’
He watched her eyes refocusing.
‘Wasn’t Matt was it?’
She kept looking away.
‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘Gimme the mic. I’ll have a chat to the bloke.’
He pretended to be going for the ear device that Mac was guessing was hidden by her hair. The girl pulled back, put her hand to her ear.
Bingo!
‘Don’t worry,’ said Mac. ‘I’ll tell him what’s what.’
The girl was on her feet. ‘Like I said, sir, I think you have the wrong girl.’
She picked up a blue backpack and walked away. He watched her walk across the mall area, down past the Gucci and Vuitton stores, along the cafes and up to the toilets. She looked into shop window refl ections to check on him, then she disappeared into the ladies.
Mac had one minute before she fi nished her conversation with Matt, was yelled at for losing eyes, and then came back out.
Mac turned, unzipped his backpack and took out the Nokia, while heading across to a Swiss watch emporium where the hockey players were ogling the price tags. He had a look at something that cost $5200, looked closer, dropped his clothes bag, bent to pick it up and deposited his Nokia in a mesh water bottle holder that sat on the side of one of the hockey boys’ bags.
Had another look at the $5200 watch - was happy he had a G-Shock habit.
Scooting over to a garbage bin, he dumped his old clothes out of the plastic shopping bag, put his backpack in the bag, then sat back down where he’d been with the girl.
The conversation he’d had with Garvs the night before was too pat. His one-time friend had made a point of giving the Nokia back to him, which Mac took to be a decoy gesture - it meant Garvs was going to microdot Mac’s clothes. Microdots were the size of a very small bindi and they stuck to clothes just as easily. You couldn’t guarantee you’d get conversations off one but they were a great location device.
The good thing about them was you could place them on a person by touching them on the sleeve or patting them on the back.
Now Garvs was going to be tracking Mac to the local dump.
The girl came back into sight. Mac’s fl ight was called. He stood, walked past her, winked. Smiled. Stopped.
‘The worst thing about spooks?’
The girl said, ‘What?’
‘All twenty-second wonders, mate. Are they coming? Are they going? Who can tell?’
He thought he saw a smirk, made a wiggling sign with his little fi nger as he moved off.
The girl laughed, looked away.
Good-looking bird, thought Mac. Shame about the circumstances.
Mac moved straight to the gents, the shop bag now in his backpack. Getting into the last booth, he pulled the shop bag and the toilet bag out of his pack, put them on the toilet seat. Then he stripped off his shirt and stashed it in the pack, unzipped the toilet bag and pulled out its contents: passport, driver’s licence, credit card, business cards, Customs ID. Pulled out more: three unmarked screw-top jars, a travel pack of Wet Ones, a pair of owl-eye spectacles, a rolled-up dark neck tie, a black plastic hair comb and what looked like a red plastic compass box of the type a student would have for geometry class.
He went to work rubbing the contents of the small jar around on his hands, smoothing it through his hair; forward, back and both sides. Next, he combed his hair, giving it a left parting. Opening the compass box he pulled out a dark, hairy mo and a tube of theatre make-up glue. Squeezing the glue onto the back of the mo, he rubbed it with the tip of his index fi nger and then pressed the mo down across his top lip.
He put on the specs, changed into the size 38 trousers, used the Wet Ones to wipe around his neck and hands, which were covered in black residue.
He put on the too-large shirt, buttoned up and put on the tie.
The spare clothes and Richard Davis ID went into the backpack. The jars and containers went into the toilet bag, apart from one of the unopened jars. The toilet bag went into the backpack. The backpack went into the shop bag. He took his shoes off, put a coin in each, face down. Put the shoes on again, picked up the shop bag and moved into the washroom area. There was one last thing. Pulling a dark contact lens from the jar, he put it in fi rst go. He hated the sensation. Did the other. He was lucky: his pale eyes and blond hair were such beacons in South-East Asia that changing them to dark rendered him almost invisible. He hoped.
He hadn’t been more than seventy seconds in the booth. Someone moved quickly to take his place.
He examined himself critically in the mirror, hoping he had at least two more minutes before the tail wandered in. This was the moment of truth: he pretty much matched the photo on his driver’s licence and passport. He was now Brandon Collier - a dark-haired, spectacled bloke whose baggy clothes were hiding a pudgy body.
The coins would alter his gait slightly, and gait was a more powerful identifi er to the human brain than just about anything else.
He went out the door, the coins in his shoes making him walk upright and jerky. The Collier character, Mac decided, was confi dent about his nerdiness. So he put a superior smirk on his face and walked down the concourse with his 38 pants giving him an elephant arse. He didn’t look, just walked like a man with all the time in the world.
Mac found the Singapore Airlines ticketing right beside the transit desk. People were yelling and carrying on. Mac got in line behind a Dutchman lecturing his wife. The Dutchman then took his turn lecturing the Singapore girl. He shrugged a lot about what kind of a country this was, had some long story he wanted to tell, with spittle fl ying off his lips in that guttural way the Dutchies speak. His wife nodded a lot.
The SIA girl gave customer service a good name. She smiled and nodded and sent them on their way without them getting what they wanted.
Mac stepped up, put down his passport. ‘Some morning you’re having, huh?’
She smiled. Tired, late thirties, smart. Once pretty, she was now just sexy. Her shift would have started at midnight and she’d be getting all the crazies, the ones who hadn’t slept, or who had fl own in from the West and had no idea what was happening to their circadians.
‘Bloody Austrians,’ said Mac. ‘How rude can you get?’
‘They were Dutch,’ said the girl.
‘Germans, Dutch. All look the same to me, mate,’ said Mac, winking.
She smiled as if she really shouldn’t.
‘You’re not the girl, are you? You know, with the parasol and the geese?’ asked Mac.
She looked confused, then suddenly got it. Smiled big, looked at her screen too intently, looked back. ‘No - I’m not
her
.’
Mac asked for a one-way to Surabaya.
She asked, ‘Economy?’
Mac nodded.
She shook her head. ‘Economy’s sold out on the 7.35 fl ight.
I can get you on the evening fl ight in economy.’
Mac shook his head. ‘How much is fi rst class?’ he asked, fanning out his Singapore dollars on the counter.
She looked back at the screen, chewed her bottom lip. Said,
‘I think we can do this.’
Mac fl ew fi rst class on an upgrade. The food was great, the leg room was even better, the brand new Airbus was out-fucking-standing. He grabbed a cold orange juice, reclined and had a think about what the hell he was doing. Five days ago he’d had a soul-weary feeling about this profession - just wanted it to be over, get into uni life. He could have walked away that morning, jumped the south-bound fl ight for Sydney, sunk a few cheeky ones, then stretched out in business class and slept all the way into Kingsford Smith. The Service apartment was valid until the end of January so he could have spent some time working out how a mortgage was going to happen. Could have booked into the Coogee Bay Hotel for a couple of nights, lain on the beach, knocked back cold beers, inspected the insides of the eyelids.
Could have spent Christmas with his mum and dad at their retirement home in Airlie; taken up some pressies for his nieces, spoiled them rotten, annoying Virginia big-time.
But Mac wasn’t going home. He was heading back into a potentially ugly situation, partially blind on info and with no Commonwealth backup. A regular boy scout running into a snake pit.
