Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent (50 page)

Wang was confused now. ‘Dead?’

‘Sure. Young lads too.’

Wang rabbited something at his offsider. The bloke shrugged.

‘What’s happened in there?’ asked Wang.

‘Well, put it this way, Wang. There’s a lot of open spaces where the gold bars used to be.’

Wang’s chest seemed to defl ate in front of their eyes, his breath catching like a man with angina. He just managed to stop gulping long enough to croak at Mac, ‘The gold?’

‘There’s about two hundred bars left.’

Wang turned pale, looked like he might keel over. He shook his head absent-mindedly, possibly wondering how quickly he could get his immediate family to a new country. Fixing Mac with a stare which was no longer arrogant, he said, ‘Um, how? How did they - ?’

‘Well that’s what we have to talk about, Wang. See, we need to fi nd your ship too,’ said Mac.

Wang spun on his heel and looked back at the quayside as if to say,
I knew something large should have been there
. He gabbled at his offsider, who shrugged again.

Wang turned back, totally panicked now.

Mac winked. ‘Now we’re in the diplomacy zone, champ.’

Mac and Paul spelled it out very clearly to Mr Wang and his associate: the VX was non-negotiable.

Sitting on the side of the Black Hawk they watched Sawtell’s boys get the butted Chinese suit on his feet again, vomit all down his jacket.

Wang was still in a state of shock. They’d taken him into the building, shown him around. Mac was disappointed with his priorities.

He’d winced at the dead boys upstairs, but when he got down the ramp and saw the space almost empty, Wang put his face in his hands as if he was going to cry.

So they’d talked it through. Mac wanted the name and codes and IDs for the ro-ro ship. He wanted them quick so he could get DIA tracking the thing.

‘What do we get? Where’s the gold?’ argued Wang.

‘Mate, the gold’s on the ship. Take the frigging gold - we don’t care. We have a couple of very bad blokes running around out there and they’re armed with VX nerve agent. You want that being detonated in Shangers?’

Wang shook his head.

‘So let’s hear it.’

Wang stammered, made a few false-starts - classic liar stuff. ‘Um, the ship is called
Hainan Star
.’

He looked pained.

‘Come on, mate,’ said Paul. ‘Time is money.’

‘I can’t talk about these matters,’ stammered Wang.

‘You’d rather I ask than you tell?’ asked Mac.

Wang nodded quickly.

‘
Hainan Star
got all the satellite tracking gear on it?’ asked Mac.

‘No comment.’

‘
Hainan Star
linked into that AIS maritime broadcast band?’

‘No comment.’

‘Any of that gold come from Burma, Iran, Syria, North Korea or al-Qaeda?’ said Mac.

Embarrassed, Wang whispered, ‘None of your business.’

Wang was right about one thing. The south end of Brani was a diplomatic zone. By the time Mac and Paul were out of the Black Hawk and hauling Wang in to meet Don and Hatfi eld, the Singaporeans and Chinese had a posse of chiefs doing their rain dance on the Keppel Terminal apron.

Mac couldn’t believe what he was seeing: it was classic offi ce guy stuff. There was an emergency with stolen nerve agent, but a certain type of man could always fi nd the time to make his little offi ce empire the priority. Mac and Paul twigged early: the Kaohsiung Holdings property was a clearing house and repository for the PLA General Staff. Singapore had the security, had the huge throughput that would hide an ‘invisible’ ship, and it had small armies of brokers, bankers, solicitors and accountants who could turn gold into all sorts of legitimate assets. Singapore was set up to do business, and the amount of business Kaohsiung Holdings did in the city was probably too great to allow legalities to get in the way.

There was another reason for Singapore’s pre-eminence as a gold and cash repository for the Chinese. It was the global centre of an underground gold-clearance and banking system called
fi e
chen
. Similar to the Muslim
hawala
that operated in the Middle East,
fi e chen
was outside government or regulatory control and operated on a transnational basis of trust. It was racially exclusive, too, and family-delineated. You couldn’t partake in
fi e chen
unless you could show a multigeneration connection to it. One of the worst arguments Mac had ever had with Jenny had been about
fi e chen
. He’d said it was like the freemasons. She’d said bullshit, that secret transnational banking systems were one of the reasons slavers got away with it so easily.

Mac and Paul watched as Wang was caught by his people as he was trying to get into Hatfi eld’s Chinook. Don came out, but he was powerless. The People’s Republic of China was reclaiming the bloke, and the Singaporeans were backing that.

Mac gave Wang the wink. ‘There goes the gold, mate. Looks like it’s going to get split seven ways, huh?’

Wang tried to say something with his eyes, but the MSS thugs dragged him away for one of those dentist appointments where you never have to wait.

Mac followed Don into the Chinook. Hatfi eld was laid out snoring on one of the airline seats. Like spooks, army blokes had to take sleep where they could fi nd it.

Don sat down at the map table. ‘Want coffee?’

Mac shook. Paul nodded. Don asked Brown’s sidekick for coffee.

Brown turned, said hi to Mac.

Don looked like shit. Pale, drawn, unhappy. ‘So, what have we got?’

Mac felt sorry for him. All his DIA guys were probably on
Golden
Serpent
or with the naval SONAR birds. Mac and Paul were still a sideshow - although the briefi ng they’d given Don over the radio was bringing Kaohsiung Holdings and the PLA further to the centre.

‘Mate, we’ve had an idea,’ said Mac. ‘The PLA General Staff have been running this ghost ship around Asia for years. Probably got others too.’

‘It’s highly illegal,’ said Don. ‘Not to mention incredibly unsafe.’

‘Not so different to the unmarkeds that go out to Johnston.’

‘That’s different, and you know it,’ said Don.

Mac was glad Jenny wasn’t present.

‘Anyway, the idea,’ continued Mac. ‘Let’s say we can’t get any satellite bounces off this tub. It’s not on the AIS, so we can’t trig a position, right?’

Don nodded. As the coffee came, Paul reached forward.

‘But we still have imaging, right?’

Don nodded.

Mac looked over at Brown, who was in front of his panel of screens and keyboards. ‘That right, Brownie? We can fi nd an image of
Hainan Star
?’

Brown turned and looked at Don, who said, ‘Go ahead.’

‘Can I get a better idea of what you want?’ asked Brown.

Mac got up, walked over to the panel. ‘Okay, so once there was a terrorist emergency in Singapore, the satellite cameras would have been going overtime, right?’

Brown nodded, looked at Mac with a dawning smile.

‘And it was in the morning, clear morning, right?’

Brown broke in, lightbulb going on in his head. ‘So there’s going to be a shot of
Hainan Star
logged somewhere.’

‘Bingo, Brownie.’

Brownie tapped on keys, mumbled things into his headset. He scrolled databases, input searches, manipulated dates. He played multiple keyboards like Rick Wakeman. Finally, the big black SGI screen came up with an astonishing image: Port of Singapore with a time and date log on the bottom right. On the top right were coordinates in the nautical format. A ghosted cross-cursor fl oated in the middle of the screen and the imagery was amazingly clear.

‘Shit. Guess they dropped the Polaroids, huh? Got some new gear?’ said Mac, impressed.

Brownie laughed. ‘It’s pretty good stuff.’

Mac took a seat, pulled it up close. Paul and Don leaned over the back of both of them. Mac asked for a closer pull on Brani. Brownie shifted the cross, double-clicked on his mouse. The image got closer over Brani.

‘Again, mate.’

Brownie brought them in close, then Mac asked him to go further south. They zeroed in over the Kaohsiung Holdings building and
Hainan Star
.

The time code said they were looking at an image from seven-thirty am, the day before.

‘Can we take the time series forward, say ten minutes at a time?’

Brownie brought a smaller box up on the screen, changed a setting and got rid of the box, then took the time series of images forward by ten-minute increments by hitting an arrow key on the SGI keyboard.

The men watched the tailgate come down at eight am, watched the tug from the facility drive into the ship’s hold at 8.10. Brownie stopped the series. Let real time run. You could see the tug moving into the ship, with no trailers.

Mac smiled at Paul and Don. ‘It was being offl oaded.’

The time series jumped forward again. Tug taking trailers out of the hold, soldiers in plain clothes lounging on the quayside with assault rifl es over their shoulders.

At eight-thirty, the emergency started. Brownie ran the real time.

People out of the building, looking around. Pointing into the building.

People up and down the gangway of the ship. Confusion.

Brownie took it forward in jumps again. At 8.50, a tender boat arrived at the quay. Brownie took it back to real time. A group of people walked up to the Kaohsiung building. Two peeled off, placing a large bag on the quay beside the ship’s gangway. Then one went up the gangway, the other joining a group of people. They went into the building and about three minutes later the tug was moving trailers again, this time out of the building and into the ship.

Paul laughed. ‘Holy shit, Mac. Ever get the feeling you’re in the wrong line of business?’

Mac was quietly astonished at what he was watching. ‘Tell ya what, if we fi nd these blokes we’d better bring the cavalry. Know what I mean?’

Don and Paul nodded.

Brownie took the time series forward again. At 9.20 am, a person who looked to be in charge suddenly walked onto the quay. The tug reversed into the ship and soldiers disappeared into the building.

They waited. And waited. Mac was about to ask Brownie to go back to the time series, but then there it was. A naked man - Mac -

emerged on the quayside, right behind
Hainan Star
, holding a black box to his chest. A smaller bag was on his back. He paused, looked around.

Mac turned to Brown. ‘Beautiful one day. Perfect the next.’

Another man appeared on the quay, carrying the same accessories as the fi rst man. Also naked. Paul.

Mac winked at Brown. ‘Not true what they say about Asian blokes.’

Mac made a sign like he was awarding a goal at the MCG. Felt a clip over the ear.

Onscreen the men moved to a position beside the building, dressed in overalls. One walked out of the picture. The other stood there, maybe making a call. The other man came back, they stowed their stuff and jogged away.

About forty seconds later, the loading operation began again.

Mac looked at Brown. ‘Now what we need is to get a still shot of
Hainan Star
, load it into that tricky NSA neural net stuff, and run a real-time matching exercise. All ships have distinctive dimensions and features. If we can fi nd the same size, same shape, we’ve got a target.’

He turned. ‘Right, Don?’

Don looked at the SGI screen. ‘I like it.’

Mac got nasi goreng from one bain-marie and some stir-fried vegies from another. Grabbing a bottle of water, he walked over to the plastic table where Don, Paul and Sawtell were seated in the makeshift chow line.

Mac put his plate on the table, ready to dig in, noticed the others had barely touched theirs.

‘Problem, boys?’ he asked.

‘Shit, what happened to the food?’ said Sawtell, pushing it around his plate.

‘Have to get Michelin in here for a quick chat, eh John?’ joked Mac, but Sawtell wasn’t smiling.

‘I’m with him,’ said Paul. ‘Bloke’s gotta eat.’

Don smiled, rolled his eyes. ‘Singaporeans doing the catering,’ he said, like that explained everything.

Mac couldn’t believe it. ‘What, you want to get McDonald’s and Pizza Hut in here? Shit, guys, we’re in Singers. When in Rome - all that shit.’

Mac looked into annoyed, peevish eyes and got up. He went over to the chow line, grabbed the fruit bowl, came back with it. Hands went out, grabbed oranges, apples and bananas.

‘Just been having a chat with John,’ said Don. ‘It’s going to have to happen in two sections. The boat in one section and the fugitives in another. Copy?’

Mac and Paul nodded.

‘So there’s going to be a pursuit by Special Forces, with some SEALs in there too,’ said Don. ‘Then there’s the matter of securing the stolen substance and securing the ship. There’s going to be an overlap there, obviously.’ He cleared his throat.

Mac scoffed his nasi goreng, ravenous.

‘I think we’ve all been very lucky so far with the VX,’ continued Don. ‘But these guys are running around with a warhead of the substance, and it’s sitting on a bomb. Please,
please
, leave the scene if there’s any doubt, okay?’

They looked at him, silent.

‘I’m serious, guys. I know you’ve all got the Mark One pack, but you can only do so much with the antidote. Believe me, this stuff will fi nish you in fi ve minutes. You won’t even smell it.’ He looked from face to face, making sure they all understood there were to be no crazy heroics. ‘So leave the ship to the Twentieth - just leave it - and if the fugitives have the stolen item on their person, or in proximity, stand off, okay?’

The call came at 1.58 pm local while Paul and Mac were running through the ins and outs of the M4 carbine, the Green Berets’ offi cial assault rifl e.

Brownie leaned out of the Chinook door and yelled for Mac and Paul to come into the command Chinook. Don was speaking into a phone as they entered, spittle fl ying. There were two images on the SGI screen. One was of the
Hainan Star
from the earlier images, the other at a different berth.

Mac got closer, amazed at the comms and imaging gear the Yanks took for granted.